BRATTLEBORO — "Becoming The Landscape," an exhibition of recent large-scale paintings by artists Mary Therese Wright, Tina Olsen, Ellen Maddrey, and John Loggia, will inaugurate a new curatorial partnership among the artists at 118 Elliot. The show opens with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 3, and runs through Nov. 26. Gallery hours are by appointment at [email protected] or calling 802-380-9072.
Mary Therese Wright's artwork and community based projects have been shown throughout the United States since 1989. A lifelong artist, Wright founded Gallery Wright, a brick-and-mortar retail exhibition and teaching space, co-founded Campicaso@, a traveling artist-run organization focused on connecting school-age children through media and creativity, and taught workshops for over 30 years in school systems, artist-run spaces and nonprofits.
Wright has a keen interest in materiality whether painting, printmaking, or metalsmithing. She says her current work is a response to the vibrant colors and dynamic shapes of nature.
After growing up in Springfield, Massachusetts, Tina Olsen traveled widely before moving to New York City, where she taught art at the Walden School and worked for many years therapeutically with the arts at the South Beach Psychiatric Center on Staten Island.
Throughout her life, she says, no matter what else was going on, she maintained a practice of painting for what she calls "therapeutic creative expression." For Olsen, "to experience art is to be bathed in a cleansing and healing light," she says. She moved to Brattleboro in 2006 to live near her daughter and found a community of artists at the River Gallery School and 118 Elliot. She curated the "Creative Relations" shows at 118.
Ellen Cone Maddrey came to painting later in life after careers as a lawyer, an elementary school teacher, and a parent of three. She explores her feelings through color, texture, and shape. She has traveled widely, including living for three years in Jakarta, Indonesia.
Maddrey says her artistic inspiration is deeply embedded in the mountains and waters of Seattle, her childhood home, and the natural world of Vermont. She currently divides her time between Montclair, New Jersey; Wilmington, Vermont; and Paris, where her eldest daughter lives.
John Loggia has been painting and working in the arts since 1979, when he worked as an artist's assistant to Dan Flavin and other major minimalist artists. He maintained a practice of drawing and painting while working in film as a production designer and producer, most recently on the documentary Fire Music, released in 2021.
From 1984 to 2000, Loggia ran a multipurpose art and music space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In 2015, John opened 118 Elliot, an arts and education center in Brattleboro that he still runs with his partner. Loggia is also a musician who has played with jazz greats including Daniel Carter, Jeff Lederer, Blaise Siwula and Bonnie Kane, among others.
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