Beth Dary
Aqua/Terra
March 15th online exclusive with Front Room Gallery
March 20th, 4PM Virtual Walk Through with the artist
The Front Room Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of sculpture, installation, photograms, layered egg tempera and encaustic drawings by New York Artist, Beth Dary, entitled, “Aqua/Terra”. The artworks in “Aqua/Terra” explore the various manifestations of the elemental power of water, inspired through natural forms and forces of nature. In Beth Dary’s artworks, she examines the concept of water as a force to shape the land, sustain life, or erode and destroy. Dary’s artworks also respond to our connectivity and the effect of human activity on land and water. She sees phenomena such as bubbles of ancient carbon dioxide captured in Arctic ice, the rising tides due to the climate crisis, and fractal patterns formed by the liquid contaminants in urban runoff as aspects of the natural world in transition due our culture's impact on the environment.
Crue, multi-panel installation, egg tempera and encaustic on gesso panel
Beth Dary relates the flow and feeling of water through process and concept in her multi-panel installation, “Crue", (which literally means to flood). It consists of 28 panels evoking aerial images from flood zones that are the result of global warming. The fluid shapes in these works were created using a bath of water in which the surface was soaked and infiltrated with indigo dye and raw pigment. The works on paper entitled “Littoral Drift”, conceived with the notion that we are all connected through global waterways, are composed utilizing a process of layering egg tempera and encaustic drawings created from combined maps of waterscapes. “Emersion", an installation of hand-built porcelain sculptures depicting marine barnacles, expresses the environmental concern for our oceans. The visualization portrayed by Dary is one in which barnacles will increasingly occupy coastal areas as our actions warm the globe and waters begin to rise.
“Equilibrium” is a series of hand-blown glass “bubbles” which were created for a public art installation at an outdoor urban lily pond in Battery Park City, NYC. In this outdoor installation the glass orbs floated in the water and playfully reflected the drifting soap bubbles of a nearby children’s playground. While these pieces seemed whimsical in this setting, they also allude to greenhouse gas molecules and the metaphorical ‘bubble' we all live in.
These sculptures were the inspiration for a recent photogram collaboration with Anne Arden McDonald, “Flare”, in which the sculptures capture and reflect light, creating a cellular watery universe. Beth Dary utilized the sculptures themselves to compose the forms in this camera-less photographic process, in which the glass sculptures are placed directly on the surface of light-sensitive paper, and then exposed to light. The result is a negative shadow image that captures the variations in tone due to the transparency of the hand-blown glass pieces. In creating the sculptural works, Dary selects particular facets and orbs from the sculptures and sandblasts them to reduce the transparency and reflectivity in certain areas of the glass objects. These variances translate into optically sensitive tones in the photograms, with the frosted glass refracting more light and the clear glass allowing more light to expose the image.
Flare, Unique photograms, 20"h x 24" (printed in collaboration with Anne Arden McDonald)
Caged, Blown Glass and wire
In the series “Caged” the glass sculptures are encased in woven steel wire, simultaneously protecting and entrapping the organic elements within. This was in part, a response to the caging of children on our Southern border, as well as a reflection on the fragility of life on an environmental, political, and personal level. Visually the wire adds an element of sculptural drawing on the glassworks, and as objects translated to photograms, the wire creates a linear texture which further defines the forms.
Dary holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Syracuse University and a Masters of Fine Arts from Memphis College of Art. Her work has been exhibited in galleries, arts institutions, and museums nationally and internationally. She has received grants from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, The Manhattan Community Arts Fund, and she has been commissioned by The Battery Park City Authority in Manhattan to create a public art installation for the Rockefeller Park’s Lily Pond. Dary has also received numerous fellowships, residencies and awards including through Yaddo, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Two Trees Cultural Space Subsidy Program. Her work is included in private, corporate and museum collections in the USA and Europe.