Campus News

works on paper go on display

The Lamar Dodd School of Art Galleries present The Cartographer’s Podiatrist’s Underestimation of a Melancholic Toe (Contemporaneous Mappings of the Spirit, Body and Mind), an exhibition of works on paper by current Lamar Dodd chair Nina Bovasso. The exhibition will remain on view through March 9.

With this body of work, Bovasso seeks a harmony rendered through the chaos of “everything happening at once.” Employing a strategy of accumulation of the most basic marks—a dot, a line, proliferation of color, size, shape and surface texture—­Bovasso creates works where design and pattern have gone amok, defying order. The simple form of a doodle is elevated to the heroic; playfulness and whimsicality take on a seriousness and rhythm.

She references Urpflanze, Goethe’s concept of the archetypal plant, viewing plant life as an expression of dynamic process of continual change. Her interest is in the representation of nature in decorative arts and decorative arts as representative of cultures. This exhibition will feature four large-scale paintings on paper, all in diptych format, and created within the past two years.

A native of New York, Bovasso received a M.F.A. from Bard College where she received the Elaine de Kooning Memorial Fellowship; her B.F.A. is from the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1994, she attended Skohegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

The Main Gallery is open 9 a.m.–5 p.m. weekdays.