Fine Arts Center Galleries
University of Rhode Island
January 24 – February 25, 2007
Gallery Reception Sunday, January 28, 2-4 pm
Kingston, RI—MOTIVES FOR WRITING is a body of abstract prints and paintings that have passionately occupied Providence based artist Irene Lawrence for several years. Lawrence has a long-term involvement with painting via formative training at the Rhode Island School of Design as well as with printmaking, instruction in the latter featuring concentrated study at Crown Point Press, San Francisco, from 1997-99.
Within her series of painting and prints is an important project Lawrence has undertaken recently, developing a conceptually unique artist’s book—an imaginative book without words. As the artist explains, MOTIVES FOR WRITING: A TEXT IN FIVE MOVEMENTS is the title of a book whose content invokes the broad tradition of marks associated with written communication and the rhythms of text, poetry and music. The book is structured by sequencing the digital reproductions of etchings made by the artist. The reader/listener becomes attentive to the progression of the book that does away with conventional narrative like modernist pioneer Alain Robbe-Grillet before her, but even more, dispenses with words per se.
Lawrence draws excitedly on performing arts as well as visual arts traditions for her craft. In addition to being a devoted practitioner of fine art, she is a musician and proponent of listening to live concert music who is also involved in the literary arts. In self-knowing fashion, Lawrence writes of her book, “Its choreography is structured in the spirit of reading a novel, a long poem or listening to a piece of music. It might also be considered an improvisation.”
Recently one of Lawrence’s aquatints served as the cover for a book of poems by Catherine Imbriglio, Parts of the Mass (Burning Deck Press, 2006). That print was originally part of 7 Black Poems by Irene Lawrence. The upcoming exhibition, disclosing itself along the lateral exhibition display cases of the Corridor Gallery, promises to speak to viewers in novel and elastic ways, and to “sound” brightly as a visually and intellectually absorbing harbinger of the new year. Juxtaposed to the concomitant Main Gallery exhibition called Looking at the Land: Merrill Wagner Paintings, abstraction will be felt to run live and deep and resonant as 2007 takes shape.
Gallery Reception
Sunday, January 28, 2-4 pm
Join us!
Corridor Gallery hours
Daily, 9 am – 9 pm
The FINE ARTS CENTER GALLERIES are open to the public without charge
and are handicapped accessible.
The Galleries are closed on federal and local holidays.
FIDELITY INVESTMENTS is the major sponsor of our 2006/07 season.