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STICK PEOPLE

Christopher Abrams is a sculptor and teacher in Waltham, MA, who makes provocative, small-scale sculpture focused on social justice and the environment. Abrams is an active member of the Boston Sculptors Gallery and a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art, and Harvard University.

Meg Alexander’s artwork is based in drawing. She is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She has received awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and was an Alumni/ae Traveling Fellow from SMFA/Tufts University. She is represented by Ellen Miller Gallery in Boston, MA. Meg lives and works in Concord, MA.

Rebecca Doughty makes paintings, drawings and sculptural objects. Through her work she constructs a world of characters who navigate the comedies and tragedies of everyday life. Her sticks in this exhibition honor a long tradition of folk artists and visionary artists who transform these readily available natural materials. Rebecca lives in Cambridge, and works in Somerville, MA. She organized this exhibition.

Alan Doyle is a self taught artist who lives in Wicklow, Ireland. “I love words and poetry,” he says, “and I read and write. But I like the images to speak for themselves.”

Beth Galston, sculptor and installation artist, lives in Carlisle and has a studio in Somerville, MA. A few steps from her home is a network of woodland trails where she often walks and finds inspiration for her work. By collecting, reproducing, and re-presenting organic elements in her sculptures she creates forms which echo and amplify the cycles of the natural world. Her Fragilities sculptures in this exhibit are made entirely of toothpicks, assembled into wispy organic forms that ramble across the gallery walls, and appear to be more air than substance.

Jesse Hickman: “My works, both three-dimensional and paintings, are reductive abstract imagery, made primarily from reclaimed, sustainable materials. The wood I use is mostly from discarded shipping pallets, and the paintings are on used raw coffee bean bags. The visible history in the scavenged materials that I use is integral to how I work with the materials and what the completed painting or construction becomes.” Jesse lives and works in the village of Northport, in the Leelanau peninsula, NW lower Michigan.

Damien Hoar de Galvan: “For an artist who is often looking for meaning in his work— or at least looking for a way to convey meaning beyond the physical art object— a themed group show can lessen some of that burden. When I was invited to participate in Stick People, my mind quickly focused on stick as opposed to wood itself, which is my most often used material. I chose two different types of manufactured sticks, popsicle and match sticks, then set about working in my preferred mode: abstract, intuitive play, experimenting with how I could build forms from these simple, fragile materials that are generally thrown away after performing their designated tasks.” Damien lives and works in Milton, MA

Matt Neckers is the creator of the Vermont International Museum of Contemporary Art + Design, a miniature art museum set inside a 1950’s camper. He has shown at the Kent Museum, Burlington City Arts, the Bennington Museum, the Fleming Museum, the Vermont Studio Center, the Shelburne Museum, AVA Gallery, Pulp, and Real Art Ways. Hyperallergic, Art New England, Seven Days and Vermont Public Radio have all featured his work. Matt received two Vermont Arts Council Creation Grants, a Learning in Art and Culture Fellowship, and a Distinguished Arts Education Leader Award. Matt lives in Eden, Vermont, with his family.

Pat Shannon is a Boston artist. She lives and works among the trees on a hill in the neighborhood of Dorchester. She writes: “Starting with a photograph of my mother and the willow tree where she is buried, my work in this show is meant to express how memories live on, shift, blur, then come back into focus to carry our emotions across time. They exist in a place somewhere between the head and the heart, and become our close companions.”