October Exhibition at Gallery A3 -REGENERATION: Things That Fall at Our Feet

Source: Gallery A3

In REGENERATION: Things That Fall at Our Feet, Sue Katz and Rebecca Muller work with found objects, renewing, restoring, and rearranging a variety of natural and man-made materials, to infuse them with new meaning across multiple media. The exibit opens on Thursday October 5 with an opening reception at the gallery from 5-8 p.m and runs through October 28. There will be a free Art Forum Online on October 19, at 7:30 p.m. Register here. Gallery A3 is located at 28 Amity Street 1D. Gallery hours are Thursday through Sunday, 2-7 p.m.

Sue Katz

Sue Katz turns to nature—like leaves, cactus stems, bird skulls, and tree galls— for the found material she uses in mixed media art. Her works range from 12 by 12 inches and 6 by 19.5 inches up to a very large piece spanning 11 feet wide and 5.5 feet tall.  Katz adjusts size and shape to the scale of whatever natural treasure she finds, and to what else she chooses to group together as she combines organic materials. Earth-toned encaustic—pigment suspended in translucent wax—unifies the initially disparate elements. 

“Often these objects, like bird nests, simply fall at my feet when I’m out walking,” she says. The triptych Fell at My Feet brings together a bird’s nest that fell at her feet when she was visiting a friend’s gravesite in the woods in Massachusetts with a nest that similarly fell from a tree when she was walking in Cameroon with her daughter. “These things call your attention to them,” Katz explains. “New things keep falling to my feet, like the tree galls in my driveway. They are such perfect spheres—if they don’t get broken.” 

Katz credits her 11-year-old granddaughter with helping her turn towards nature. “I was hiking with my daughter and granddaughter, and my granddaughter noticed the things I was attracted to in nature. She saw this pattern before I did, and she became my teacher.“

Rebecca Muller
Rebecca Muller places images in relation to concepts that speak of the difficult conditions that we face as humans and as a planet. She begins with a “root” piece and creates variant images to explore how events and images propagate, progenerate, or beget things. She places disparate material in relation, with the hope that through pro-generation—the act of moving forward into action—we can find our way to re-generation or healing growth.  

Her artwork uses a variety of materials, including deteriorated pieces of machine-made and organic matter and embraces a range of media including photography, collage, assemblage, and the fabrication of translucent, hand-crafted paper from invasive species.

The images in Muller’s work are driven by a love of what she calls “matter” and a belief that “things or well-being matters.” Scraps of debris that have been discarded, lost, and abandoned, are found, re-discovered, and re-purposed. She finds them locally, along roadsides or in the woods. The “progenitor images” of her Culvert Series were unearthed along an old dirt road in Hatfield, largely submerged in dirt, after the old culverts were replaced. Sheets of eroded metal that inspired another series were found along the Florence bike path and near Fitzgerald Lake.  “Sometimes I walk by a place many times before the side-ways glancing eye alights on the hint of something mostly buried,” she explains. This could be her version of the serendipity of Things That Fall at Our Feet—not bird nests, but starting points for art and investigation.

Art Forum Online
In an Art Forum Online on Thursday, October 19 at 7:30 pm, Katz and Muller will speak about their process and explore the concept of REGENERATION: Things That Fall at Our Feet in relation to their work. See the gallery website www.gallerya3.com to register for this online event, which is free and open to the public. This Art in Community outreach program is supported in part by grants from the Amherst Cultural Council, Pelham Cultural Council, and Springfield Cultural Council, all local agencies, which are supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.

About Gallery A3
Gallery A3 is a contemporary, fine art gallery in downtown Amherst, Massachusetts. Members of our artist-run gallery include painters, sculptors, photographers, printmakers and mixed media artists. You can find us in the Amherst Cinema complex along with Amherst Coffee, GoBerry Yogurt and Osteria Vespa restaurant.

Gallery A3 was founded in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on 9/11. A group of local artists believed art to be essential to the health and healing of a community and began the gallery as a place to share ideas and artistic support. Since that time, the gallery has been home to over sixty artists and is now celebrating twenty years of monthly shows with openings and forums. All events are free and open to the public.

Gallery A3 strives to enliven and enrich our community by offering exhibits with public openings and open forums. It established and actively participates in the monthly art walks, Amherst Arts Night Plus, and supports regional artists with an annual juried show. It serves its own membership with conversations and programs that bring established professional and newly-emerged artists together, promoting artistic development and encouraging the creation and exhibition of exciting, new contemporary art work.