Princeton Artists Alliance celebrates land preservation with the D&R Greenway.
By: Pat Summers
When an alliance of visual artists intersects with elements of a land-preservation effort, the resulting art exhibition can only be mutually, artfully beneficial. In fact, the title of one artist’s work could be describing that serendipitous union: "Nature as the Artist."
The creative force of 24 artists, focused on various tracts of preserved land and water and woods, is realized in Princeton Artists Alliance and Preservation, an exhibition continuing through Dec. 29 at the Johnson Education Center of the D&R Greenway Land Trust.
In photographs, prints, drawings and paintings, sculpture, clay, fibers and mixed media, artist-members of the Princeton-area group, established in 1989, have produced a remarkable range of works recording their experiences and inspirations. Displayed in two levels and three areas of the building, their renderings are wildly diverse.
With light pouring through the window behind it, Tina Salvesen’s resin and mixed media sculpture, "When We Flew," is a heart-stopper. Inside the translucent tablet, bird feathers, together with earth, leaves and flower bits, are embedded in amber-hued resin. The flight may be over, but it’s remembered.
Diagonally overhead in the entrance hall, Anita Benarde’s "Swinging Bridge" is a dramatic reprise of the original in the woods below the Institute for Advanced Study. That bridge, her statement says, has been in her family for generations (she and her husband took their children to the bridge, and now her children take Ms. Benarde’s grandchildren there). This mixed media salute to it came out of the artist’s work at Dieu Donne paper mill in New York.
In his digital print of trees being "Drawn by the Light," Rajie Cook aims up among trees to capture the angular clawing of their bare branches, all reaching to encircle the open sky. Also a digital print, "Promise of Spring" resembles a pen-and-ink drawing: its spindly grass shoots with seed pods rise out of clumps of snow.
Often represented by mixed media works, Mr. Cook opted this time for photographic expression, joining five other PAA members. "Nature studies lend themselves to the medium," says Marsha Levin-Rojer, the organization’s president. And William Vandever’s "Bridge Tender’s Garden," harking back to English country scenes, proves it.
Another surprise in the show is "D&R Canal," Harry Naar’s dense acrylic landscape. More typical of this artist is his second work on view, "The Path," in black ink on board. Nancy Lee Kern, usually associated with colorful watercolor abstractions, has entered two images in oils of placid Guernsey cows she encountered at Coventry Farm.
Still another departure, though mostly in degree, is what looks like a bas-relief of boulders, rocks and pebbles that Marie Sturken created with handmade paper. Also a regular at Dieu Donne paper mill, she worked with coarse sand, abaca pulp, colored linen pulp and water to create a seeming cross section of the physical scene in her textured impression of "Sourlands Creek."
Thomas Francisco, PAA’s newest member, produced two large giclee fine art prints for his first show with the group. In "When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves," three pine cones on a branch appear in front of a moldering form, maybe wood and mostly yellow. "A gathering of spirit" shows more pinecones, this time arranged in an oval, rough-hewn wooden vessel.
Mr. Francisco, a veteran of nearly 40 years in commercial and fine arts, has most recently been part of a show at the Hunterdon Museum of Art, "War in the World: Artists Respond to the Last Five Years." An award-winning and frequently published photographer, he’s president of a graphic design and photography studio.
"I feel that the natural ‘found objects’ I collect from fields, forests, streams and mountains hold within them the energy and spirit of the earth from as far back as primitive man," he writes in an e-mail. "My objective is to find that pent-up energy and release it visually… When constructing these assemblages I imagine how our ancestors might have collected and arranged simple objects around their own rustic dwellings."
Madhvi Subramanian, PAA’s second clay artist-member, responded to the Greenway’s preserved sites with three smoke fired clay pieces, "Jurassic Rock" (1 to 3). Stripes and irregular blue and olive shades mark her earth-toned "rocks."
The atypical parts of Peter Stefferson’s "Spirit Chair of the Land," a weathered-wood green rocker, herald its novel nature: bentwood arms; metal rabbit silhouettes as back rests; a sunflower and two birds above the back; a "sweet corn" sign and a black farm cat below the colander-like metal seat.
The rusty-seat’s repeated in his "Heart and Folly," a welded steel chair juxtaposing romantic with ominous elements. Heart shapes and roses mix with pieces of chain and an incongruous green frog perched on a horse shoe. (Sit at your own risk.)
Barbara Osterman’s "Nature as Artist" title describes her softly green-toned painting more accurately than the viewer might realize. After coating heavy watercolor paper with seven layers of watercolor paint, she anchored the paper with rocks and left it outdoors. Over a period of time, leaves fell, leaving stains and penetrating the watercolor layers. The finished work was, indisputably, a collaborative effort.
A close look quickly dispels the seeming solitude of "A Quiet Place," Barbara Gould Watts’ watercolor. Three people stand among the trees. Unnoticeable at first, they add mystery to the painting once discerned. Then again, maybe they’re simply out for a post-prandial stroll.
In the late ’90s, PAA began adopting a theme for each exhibition, with artists responding in individual mediums and styles. Themes have included Homer’s Odyssey, which (fittingly enough) has traveled widely, and the recent Marsh Meditations exhibition at Bristol-Myers Squibb, celebrating a natural, nearby treasure: the Trenton-Hamilton Marsh.
The scope and success of PAA’s Marsh Meditations show drew the attention of D&R Greenway representatives, among others. Aware that their new headquarters would open this year, they saw a potential fit between art and land preservation. The show now in place celebrates both "the 8,780 acres of land preserved by the D&R Greenway Land Trust" and the "imagination and creativity of the Princeton Artists Alliance."
Princeton Artists Alliance and Preservation is on view through Dec. 29 at the
Johnson Education Center of the D&R Greenway Land Trust, 1 Preservation Place,
Princeton. Gallery hours: Tues.-Sat. 1-4 p.m. For information, call (609) 924-4646.
On the Web: www.drgreenway.org.
Princeton Artists Alliance on the Web: www.princetonartists.org

