by Deborah Minsky
Gatehouse News Service
A Director’s Choice exhibition comes with its own seal of approval. Even before the work of the highlighted artist is well known to the general public it has already gained favor. For a museum show, “director’s choice” precisely reflects what the name states. It is a rare honor to be singled out in such a fashion.
At the Provincetown Art Association and Museum Director’s Choice show, currently on display, PAAM director Christine McCarthy bestowed this rare honor upon the Boston and New York City artist Michele Francis.
“It is important to bring work to Provincetown from beyond the bridge so that local people and the visiting public can get a sense of what other people are creating,” says McCarthy, although this, she explains, is far from her sole reason in choosing Francis.
“Almost every year I curate a director’s choice exhibition at PAAM that is more a reflection of my own personal response to artwork,” she says. “I was introduced to Michele’s work through a colleague, and I was able to see an exhibition of hers last year in a New York gallery. Her work reminds me a bit of the British artist Rachel Whiteread, an artist with whom I had the opportunity to work when I was at [Boston’s] Institute of Contemporary Art. At the time, Whiteread was casting negative space with resin, and seeing Michele’s work brought me back to that time.”
For this show, McCarthy selected the artist’s “M Series 1,” which she describes as “a departure from the paintings [Francis] has been making over the years. I am very drawn to the simplicity and elegance within the work, as I tend to be a minimalist when it comes to curating and collecting. I love [her] choice and integration of materials, especially the use of colored resin — illuminated and textural, and sculptural and architectural altogether.”
Francis’s “M Series 1” is unlike any other art previously shown at PAAM. The overall concept of this exhibition startles with its unified simplicity, yet each piece stands alone as a dramatic, luminous statement. On a chilly but sun-filled winter day, the initial view of Francis’s work can stun a viewer into silent awe. Natural light streaming from the outside, combined with expertly placed artificial spots, caresses the seven pieces in PAAM’s front gallery.
The frame for each piece, integral, not secondary, to the whole and created from quarter-inch wire, wood and thin tissue paper combined with a gel gloss, provides the base for a core mold of liquid foam into which UV-protected resin, tinted with pure water color pigment is carefully poured. Light modeling paste, enhanced by hours and hours of polishing, perfects the external surface of the central, colored focal point. We are not talking straight-edged, geometric angles or images. Each piece in its own way offers a variation on the wavy sinuous form of an aquatic body or pool, watery and translucent yet somehow solid and enduring.
Depending on the time of day and even the weather outside, “M Series 1” is capable of constant change, either subtle or dramatic. One minute you can be looking out as if through a window towards the sea. Move on to a different piece and you are glimpsing a tranquil lake. Francis prefers to work in stages, on more than one piece at a time as part of a larger, all-involving process. “It sounds chaotic,” she admits, but clearly she remains in control, keeping everything in balance.
Francis’s control of precise, original color defines her exhibition. Luscious magenta is balanced against the deepest cerulean blue. Her use of yellow gives a whole new energy to this demanding, tricky pigment. Never is her palette in danger of going muddy or trite. With each succeeding piece, the viewer sees a particular tone as if for the very first time.
“My work here floats pure pigment watercolor and resin, representing a departure from my more familiar use of opaque and iridescent paints — a necessary leap to convey those transitory, more peripheral sensory experiences,” Francis says.
Francis’s artist statement beautifully captures her inspiration and aspirations for this new genre of painted sculpture — or is it sculptured painting?
“In our time-pressured, attention-deficit, always-on society, I think art serves a critical role in demanding our absolute focus,” she says. “Technology has given us amazing tools for communication and visual expression, but there is nothing like considering something made from nothing that has become tangible and real to command our attention. In this case, a physical embodiment of a visceral experience.”
“I have to have the vision first and then figure out how to get there,” says Francis. “I knew what I wanted to capture — an articulation of ethereal light, translucent color, and the role of shadow play across surfaces in any given day and place. ‘M Series 1’ is intended to mark specific moments in time, to essentially freeze time, so the medium had to imply that. These pieces are meant to bring the viewer a glimpse forward, a feeling of calm, a sense of possibility for what’s ahead.”
