Four new shows open Sunday at Silvermine Guild Art Center

Silvermine Guild Art Center
1037 Silvermine Rd., New Canaan, (203) 966-9700
Director's Choice: Larry Lewis
Nancy McTague-Stock: Fragments of the Aquatic
Roxanne Faber Savage: Bird(ish)
Joseph Saccio: Memory and Metamorphosis
Sept. 25—Nov. 4, 2011.
Opening Reception: Sun., Sept. 25, 2—4 p.m.

Press release

The fall season brings four new exhibits to the Silvermine Arts Center, located in New Canaan, CT. Opening on Sept. 25 these new exhibits provide a look at the work of an artist whose work comes to awareness posthumously, reflections on the coexistence of nature and industry, and expressions of myth and reality. All are welcome to the opening reception on Sun., Sept. 25 from 2—4 p.m. The exhibits will run through Nov. 4.

The Director’s Choice exhibit features works by reclusive artist Larry Lewis as seen in his collage books, which he began in the late 60’s and continued to produce until his death in 2004. His niece and heir to the artwork, Sharyn Prentiss Laughton, shared that Larry never finished any of his books, but rather worked randomly and haphazardly through each one, and showed them only to her. The totality of his work was only discovered after he died. A member of the Silvermine Guild of Artists for a brief period of time in the 1960’s, very little is known about him personally or artistically. His artistic progress is sketchy at best as he rarely dated his work and rarely exhibited. As a member of the Guild, he exhibited some of his gouache work, however, there is no record that indicates whether he ever exhibited his collage books at Silvermine. A reclusive and unassuming person, his books took on another life with brilliantly hand ink colored pages created from photocopies of collected Victorian images, movie stars from the 1920’s and 30’s, and newspaper ads for elixirs, potions, ways to get rid of wrinkles, address sagging waistlines, pinch back ears and body remedies. Each page and spread was composed as a painting unto itself.


Fragments of the Aquatic showcases works by Silvermine Guild Artist Nancy McTague-Stock, a resident of Wilton, CT. McTague-Stock is an artist who works in a variety of media. She shares her interest in creating imagery that offers a glimpse of unnoticed rhythms of the natural world, with deep-rooted connections in ecology, psychology and sociology through drawings, paintings, printmaking, new media and writing. In its many forms, water plays a vital role for all of us. Water offers us properties of sustenance, potential for destruction, meditative moments, athletic opportunities and artistic vision. Her preoccupation with natural water occurrences in daily life is evident in this series of work. “By focusing on fragments available to me in a singular moment, I invite the audience to share in a multi-sensorial exhibition. I hope they will engage, reflect and contemplate how water plays critical and numerous roles in their lives,” says McTague-Stock. “The works of art in this exhibition offer the viewer an opportunity to play with their own perception of reality.”


Visual artist and printmaker, Roxanne Faber Savage has had an on-going fascination and attraction to birds and utility wires, which has taken on a life of its own. Bird(ish) is an exhibition of prints based on highway vistas, bird imagery and daydreams culled from her daily drives on I95 and rural roads. This show is a unique documentation of images shot, drawn, copied, stretched, pressed and printed, depicting the co-existence of nature and industry in the modern landscape. Savage will present interpretive exhibition programming in the gallery on Wednesdays from 3—5 p.m. for the run of the show (9/28, 10/5, 12, 19, 26 and 11/2). Each Wednesday she will engage gallery goers to “print, talk, draw and bird watch.”



A resident of Fairfield, Savage, whose work is comprised of traditional etchings, silk aquatint monoprints and a transfer technique called paper lithography, says that a “stream of consciousness and a rich store of personal memories are the starting place for my prints and drawings. My interests in energy and freedom, in the widest sense, provide a central theme through which I channel my experiences. I value the emotive power of color, and layer my prints with saturated color and energy related imagery: strewn power lines, loopy crayon scribbles and scratchy surface textures. I make prints because I love the possibilities presented in the combinations of multiple printmaking techniques, and the physicality of using an etching press.”

Memory and Metamorphosis, an exhibit of sculptural works in a variety of sizes and materials by Joseph Saccio, expresses the artist’s personal feelings associated with myth and ritual, loss and rebirth. “I’m interested in the idea of great power joined to fragility and vulnerability, a very human, and indeed, mythic combination,” says Saccio. “This is reflected in the choice of weighty, large materials literally joined with, or in association with, fragile materials such as paper or fiber bindings especially noted at the physical connections among parts of my sculptures.” The dark somber pieces are expressive of loss and rebirth, and for the artist, associated with myth and ancient ritual, leading the viewer through the changing process, producing forms that are abstract but resemble a living organism.