Courtney Luciana – Special to Southern News
Everyday bustle continuously occurs throughout Whalley Avenue in Westville, but one should be careful not to overlook the Kehler Liddell Gallery. Heaps of Connecticut regional artists have been posted throughout the gallery since 2004. Nowadays, two solo exhibits simultaneously change throughout each month alongside 24 more artists that have their intimate workings posted in the section named “The North Gallery.”
Currently, the featured showcases are “New Work” by Keith Johnson and “Time Capsule” by Edith Borax-Morrison, on display until Nov. 15.
Johnson received his MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and after 10 years of teaching achieved an MBA in 1987. Johnson has described his material to be a collection of grids, typologies, topologies, and extended imagery.
“An extended viewing of a photographic idea would reveal not only the idea but additionally time, light, color comparison would change during the extended time spent looking,” said Johnson’s personal statement.
Johnson fashions his pieces through a mix of colors, shapes and angles. Visitors of the gallery would be awed by his image Pont d’Amour, a 2014 archival inkjet print, framing a colossal bundle of multicolored locks. The $3,000 photograph mirrors the romantic set of locks that were chained across the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris. Johnson has also exhibited sky, rocks and water to capture the passion of nature in an immeasurable light. His multiple sets from 2012-2014 titled as “The Chosen Spot” and another deemed as “Shades of Gray” pattern a wide spread of versatile, digital prints casting intensified hues and shadows of various skies and bodies of water.
Borax-Morrison’s journey unfolded while she attended an art academy in high school in New York and claims to have blossomed ever since. She received her master’s degree at LIU Post in New York and progressed onto a postgraduate course in printing and crafts involving loom weaving which advanced her artistic gift of the “pen weave.”
Today Borax-Morrison is in her 80s but continues to press on at the drawing table each day at her studio in Branford revealing that she is nothing less than driven. She takes on each drawing as a personal challenge to solve.
“I start with a blank canvas and a pen. The response is almost automatic and I don’t judge what I’m drawing,” said Borax-Morrison over a phone interview. “I start from the middle and then go outward. Later on I will finalize on details and decide if I’m going to add color or not.”
The lines, ribbons and cords that unroll throughout every illustration create an entirely surreal threaded world. Each piece from Borax-Morrison’s abstract collection is spontaneous but neatly embodied.
Anyone who encounters the striking black and white drawing titled as the Descending Form would be fixated by the intricate marks of ink that form the bigger image of an immaculate, laced mass. She views her piece to represent the image of a sea creature traveling through multiple trailing lines. Guests of the display will detect that while Borax-Morrison holds a similar style for each design not one assembles in the same exact fashion.
Behind the promoted displays is the ‘North Gallery’ which arrays a section of all different kinds of crafted techniques. From a cast of bright digital shots to simple black and white sketches-these works are guaranteed to stimulate your mind.
The next reception at Kehler Liddell Gallery will occur on Sunday, Nov. 22, from 3 to 6 p.m. where the works of photography, painting, mixed media, printmaking and sculpture will be presented.
Photo Credit: Dylan Haviland – Arts & Entertainment Editor
HEADER PHOTO: Keith Johnson’s photo series “The Chosen Spot” in Kehler Liddell Gallery
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