SPIRIT OF FORMS
Paintings by Sarah Gilfillan : Sculptures by Kate CrasswellerSarah Brook Gallery is pleased to announce “Spirit of Forms”: sixteen works in dialogue by painter Sarah Gilfillan and sculptor Kate Crassweller.
It has often been said that the best gallery programs feel innately like group exhibitions, and one feels, living through the pandemic, the heightened importance of such chosen families. As Gilfillan brought a group of eight paintings on paper to fruition, a connective cord emerged to Crassweller’s work, and she developed a group of eight corresponding sculptures. Assembled together, the sculptures and works on the wall recall molecular structures, ancient fertility charms, and oceanic treasures. In addition to precipitating interplay between works, the dialogic format of “Spirit of Forms” is also embedded within the works of both artists, whose shapely iconography emerges as one form gives way to another in unfolding, progressive processes.
In a work Nacre, Gilfillan refers to the iridescent Mother-of-Pearl “coating” on the insides of many mollusks, which is the same material as pearl itself.
It has often been said that the best gallery programs feel innately like group exhibitions, and one feels, living through the pandemic, the heightened importance of such chosen families. As Gilfillan brought a group of eight paintings on paper to fruition, a connective cord emerged to Crassweller’s work, and she developed a group of eight corresponding sculptures. Assembled together, the sculptures and works on the wall recall molecular structures, ancient fertility charms, and oceanic treasures. In addition to precipitating interplay between works, the dialogic format of “Spirit of Forms” is also embedded within the works of both artists, whose shapely iconography emerges as one form gives way to another in unfolding, progressive processes.
In a work Nacre, Gilfillan refers to the iridescent Mother-of-Pearl “coating” on the insides of many mollusks, which is the same material as pearl itself.
We have only a remedial understanding of the formation of mother-of-pearl and oyster pearls, though we know they manifest from a methodical layering of both organic and inorganic nanoparticles: there is a mysterious and helical dance at work here, all of it an unhurried response to an irritant.
Crassweller’s Tribute explodes Nacre’s dance into the third dimension: the cock-comb-cum-shell-ripple arches over and around a spherical element like a wave crashing over an egg. The encircling shapes evoke womb-space as well as the growing pearl tucked snuggly into its shell. These are not sacred geometries, which involve human ascription of god-as-designer of the angular universe, but rather sacred biomorphic grains inviting all of us to see ourselves as bearers of creative power. As a whole, “Spirit of Forms” reminds viewers that creation begets creation, that mystery is important to court, and that passage through often involves traversing swirling eddies and portals one did not set out to design.
- Blair Hansen
Crassweller’s Tribute explodes Nacre’s dance into the third dimension: the cock-comb-cum-shell-ripple arches over and around a spherical element like a wave crashing over an egg. The encircling shapes evoke womb-space as well as the growing pearl tucked snuggly into its shell. These are not sacred geometries, which involve human ascription of god-as-designer of the angular universe, but rather sacred biomorphic grains inviting all of us to see ourselves as bearers of creative power. As a whole, “Spirit of Forms” reminds viewers that creation begets creation, that mystery is important to court, and that passage through often involves traversing swirling eddies and portals one did not set out to design.
- Blair Hansen
Ripple, 2020
Sarah Gilfillan
Oil on paper
22 x 30 / 25 x 32.5 in
SOLD
Soteria, 2021
Kate Crassweller
Unglazed white ceramic
12 x 15 x 6.5 in
SOLD
Soft Solitude, 2021
Kate Crassweller
Burnished black ceramic, unglazed
6.5 x 17 x 4.5 in
$1100
Inquire
Echo, 2020
Sarah Gilfillan
Oil on paper
22 x 30 / 25 x 32.5 in
SOLD
Nacre, 2020
Sarah Gilfillan
Oil on paper
22 x 30 / 25 x 32.5 in
SOLD
Tribute, 2021
Kate Crassweller
Burnished black ceramic, unglazed
10 x 15 x 4 in
SOLD
Loop, 2021
Kate Crassweller
Burnished black ceramic, unglazed
11 x 10.5 x 6 in
SOLD
Dovetail, 2020
Sarah Gilfillan
Oil on paper
22 x 30 / 25 x 32.5 in
SOLD
Eye of the Moon, 2021
Kate Crassweller
Unglazed white ceramic
12 x 14 x 6 in
SOLD
Hestia, 2021
Kate Crassweller
Burnished black ceramic, unglazed
8 x 13.5 x 5.5 in
SOLD