Positions and Props: A Loosening Line
A.P.E. Gallery • Northampton, MA • apearts.org • October 8–November 6, 2021
There is a lyrical connection between the sculpture of Roberly Bell and the paintings of Sandy Litchfield. Their decision to create this exhibit together came out of conversations on long pandemic walks. Throughout a process of sharing haiku texts, snapshots of studio drawings and other studio experiments, they devised a way to distill the unpredictable world into their studio practice. The resultant Positions and Props: a loosening line retains the sense of this open experimental approach.
Litchfield’s canvases and Bell’s forms mirror each other in the flow of form and color. Bell’s sculptures “dance” before the rhythmical patterns of Litchfield’s paintings. The bulbous, upward thrusting forms of Bell’s Foreign Object #31 harmonize with the organic shapes of Litchfield’s Remedy. There is a sense of an undoing of boundaries between two things, like a figure in landscape. The exhibit title suggests a theater set, with props in place. The artists write that “the logic just appeared by itself—a painting and a sculpture in proximate space, each recognizing a part of itself in the other.”
Bell’s sculptures in plaster, paper, ceramic, and wood sometimes seem to be a translation of Litchfield’s gouache and oil paintings, even though they were created independent of each other. Litchfield’s Wassassne, a fascinating composition of flowing, interlocking forms in shades of plum and blue, is complemented by Bell’s Foreign Object #29 which looks as if it could have whimsically popped out of the painting.
Available Potential Enterprises, aka A.P.E. Arts, is a Community Arts Trust that supports artists working in all disciplines. It is a perfect venue for the innovative pairing of Bell and Litchfield who explored words like space, landscape, sky, water, earth, light, wind in refining the concept of the show. They both have extensive research and teaching experiences, which provide the formal underpinning of their work. Bell and Litchfield carefully planned and installed this exhibit, which enlarges the scope of their individual disciplines and provides the viewer with a delightful experience of a “loosening line” that embraces both artists’ expressions and creates an experiential environment within the gallery space.
—B. Amore