Interwoven: Words & Images. A New February Exhibit At Gallery A3

Source: Gallery A3

Six women artists will display work that interweaves visual art and original writing at Gallery A3 from March 4-April 2 in an exhibit entitled Interwoven: Words and Images.  There will be an opening reception on Thursday March 3 from 5-7 p.m and an online art forum on Thursday March 17, at 7:30 p.m.  The forum is open to the public and pre-registration at www.gallerya3.com is required.  Gallery A3 is located at 28 Amity Street in Amherst.

Interwoven: Words & Images brings together visual art and written work by six artists who have been meeting for two and a half years, as Women of Words (WOW) of Gallery A3. WOW members began meeting monthly in the gallery in late 2019 to share their writing.  Shifting online in response to the pandemic, they continue to work together today. They have collaborated on group projects, such as online readings and the creation of an accordion book displayed in February 2020. And they have continued to work individually, seeking ways in which their visual art enriches, echoes, reflects, and reveals their work with words.

Marianne Connolly is a writer and visual artist working with photography, collage, and fiction. Her stories about avian shape-shifters led to a photographic installation titled Tangled Light exploring wintertime nests in barren trees. Marianne was a 2021 finalist for the Writers of the Future award, and has an upcoming story in The Future Fire.

Laura Holland folds words and images into handmade books of varied shapes, sizes, and structures, such as a tiny accordion about a walk in the rain, a pop-up about a cell phone’s “Featured Photos,” and a Coptic binding about an elusive memory of a particular shade of green.

One-hundred-word short stories of life and love are the chapters in Sue Katz’s book to come, Sue’s Shorts. Not a writer but a visual artist, she is trying to learn how to “show it” and not “tell it” with words about her family life. She is having a good time remembering the best of times!

Painter Nancy Meagher writes about love, loss, Marzipan, and the moon, in an eight-paneled fold out book titled The Strainer.

Rochelle Shicoff is a painter/storyteller whose text is shapes and colors. In this series, The Backroads, the focus is on cows and sheep. She tells about her southwest travels on ribbon roads and dry river beds. The accordion book explores wanderings into her imagination.

Janet W. Winston is a visual artist.  Creating images through words is more recent to her. She has always been drawn to the natural world and family, and this group of prints and watercolors has been woven into stories focusing on those areas in a handmade book.

Art Forum Online
The six artists of Interwoven will offer an Art Forum on Zoom, on Thursday, March 17 at 7:30 pm. Each will present a short reading, share images of their art work in the exhibition, and discuss connections between their writing and their visual art, with time also for audience comments and questions. 

See the gallery website (www.gallerya3.com) to register for this online event, which is free and open to the public. Gallery A3’s Expanding Community Program, which includes the Art Forum, is supported in part by a grant from the Amherst Cultural Council, a local agency, supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

For more information contact Marianne Connolly, mtc@lsiddallcrocker-com