AS ABOVE, SO BELOW

World’s Fair Gallery • Providence, RI • worldsfairgallery.com • Through August 26, 2022

World’s Fair Gallery strongly adheres to the principal that art is meant to be lived with and in. Each show is paired with ceramic and glass vessels, enhancing accessibility to the artwork itself. The gallery’s owner and curator, Willa Van Nostrand, notes the importance of experiencing art in many media, commenting, “Our sensory intelligence is activated when we touch and experience things in person…. It accesses a different plane of artmaking and experiencing.” This is evident in the gallery’s most recent exhibition.

As Above, So Below is a three-person interdisciplinary show rooted in explorations of color, transparency, and physical objectivity. Centered around Brett Day Windham’s hand painted cyanotypes, the show expands into the air in blown glassware by Pierre Bowring, and grounds itself in the earthenware vessels of Tammy Kim.

Fever Dream is a cyanotype and watercolor painting by Windham that encapsulates the tension between objects and abstraction explored throughout the show. This intimate painting evokes fireworks, as neon green allium flowers explode above pale red stems. The essence of the flower itself remains in almost scientific detail caught by the cyanotype, yet in her use of color and mark-making, the flower is resurrected in luminous memory. Each one of Windham’s prismatic paintings float light and airy within the deep Prussian blue cyanotype, depicting collections of shells, feathers, bones, and snakeskins.

The colorful airiness of Windham’s work is reflected in Bowring’s flamboyant and painterly blown glass vessels. Commissioned specifically for this show, the series of bedside decanters and glassware feature colored “brush strokes,” reminiscent of amoeba and jellyfish caught in clear drinking cups. Enhanced through dramatic combinations of rosey pink, viridian green, and other intense color pairings, these vessels create the sky to Windham’s body.

Finally, the exhibition is grounded in Kim’s ceramic work. Her series Earthen Bodies could be planted and grown. They are earthy and tactile, bubbling out of primordial forms and transforming into mature vessels. In contrast to the glasswork of Bowring, Kim’s earthenware brings us back to the mud and provides the gravity that harkens back to the rich ground of the cyanotype.

—Eleanor Q. C. Olson