Salem Arts Association’s newest exhibit, Be Still, will host an Opening Reception this Friday May 19, 2023 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. This event is free and open to the public! I shall be there and hope you can come by and say Hello! My painting of the Beverly/Salem Bridge, Making Connections (acrylic, 12×24″, $485) has been juried into the show which will run from May 20 to June 17 at their beautiful gallery, 159 Derby St, Salem, MA 01970. Salem Arts hours are Saturdays and Sundays from noon until 6:00 p.m. The first floor houses the SAA Gallery Shop and the Paul Nathan Gallery. Upstairs you will find the exhibits, including Be Still.
This show was open to both artist members of the SAA and to non-member artists. They were met with the following challenge: The Oxford Dictionary defines “Stillness” as the absence of movement or sound. Stillness can be a moment of solitude, the calm surrender that we feel during meditation, the quiet moment just before an intense storm, the tranquility of water, or the uninterrupted surface of a frozen pond. This exhibition features artworks that depict the stillness within and all around us, or the glimmer of the storm to come.
My painting, Making Connections, was painted from a photograph I took of the Beverly/Salem Bridge. The title reflects all the connections shown: the bridge between Beverly and Salem, the railroad bridge, the water, the sky, the radio/phone tower, and even the red light on top of it which communicates with the airplanes in the sky. One early morning as I drove from Danvers to Beverly, the sky and water were so calm and the color was so stunning that I had to pull my car over to capture the moment. When painting, I did take artistic license and placed the railroad bridge in the distance which allowed me to have the legs of the Beverly/Salem Bridge reflect directly against the water without having the train cut them in half visually. That is the fun of being an artist; I can control the world on my canvas.
Guest Juror: Claudia Paraschiv
2023 Salem Public Artist in Residence (PAiR) on Artists’ Row
Claudia Paraschiv is an architect, public artist, and educator. Born in Romania and raised in Los Angeles, Claudia now lives with her family in Salem MA, where she started her design practice, Studioful Design in 2016. Studioful takes on a varied constellation of projects for more meaningful living and engages people to participate in the transformation of their worlds as purposeful places of stewardship, democracy, social gathering, self-expression, and imagination.
Claudia will continue these explorations as the 2023 Public Artist in Residence (PAiR) on Artists’ Row with her project the Tree of Care + Wonder / Árbol del Cuidado + del Maravillas, a large scale sculpture of a whimsical tree featuring migrant stories and a magical canopy!
The Tree of Care + Wonder / Árbol del Cuidado + del Maravillas will transform streets in Salem into community spaces of art and friendship to demonstrate the potential of streets to do more than move cars: local artists (poets, visual, musicians, dance, and theatre) will collaborate to produce civic-art events centered on migration stories, food memories, local history, and novel visions of how a future city might take care of and bring wonder to its residents.
