Featured Artist: Karen Margolis
For over thirty years, Karen Margolis has developed a singular process of art making. Working with a variety of materials, including fabrics and maps, Margolis burns holes as an act of erasure and then uses the damaged materials to construct new forms. The artist herself describes it as "a struggle between destruction and creation."
"Synthetic Gardens" tumbles toward the viewer as its turbulent forms engulf us in mosaic-like details and vivid colors. Exploring the tension between chaos and structure, she presents us with a garden which may have lost its way yet which through the profusion of color and texture nevertheless manages to seduce us with its luscious presence. Like Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights," the piece invites us to zoom in on its details. While Bosch relies on uncanny imagery and symbolism, Margolis' suggests a world seen through a microscope and a garden that grows like a cancer out of control.
The installation "Emissions" cascades down from the ceiling, enmeshing the observer in a tangle of wires and threads. Built from elements gleaned from her own abandoned works, the piece reflects on the weight and density of personal baggage.
Another popular motif in Margolis’ work appears to be a simple circle but which, for the artist, represents the "enso," a sacred symbol in Zen Buddhism embodying infinity and perfection. "I am attracted to the mystical aspect," she writes "as well as to the paradox of...reinterpreting the circle in both positive and negative space as a shared language connecting body to mind.”
Finally, her "Maps Series" use sensuous colors and layered surfaces to postulate a vision of an imaginary place. Holes disrupt the predictable continuities of ordinary maps. The connective tissue between places is removed, as if to dislocate our expectations by implying a universe that exists without borders of familiar places of attachment.
Simultaneously meticulous and turbulent, exacting and rapturous, Margolis' work is pursued for the sake of a stated ambition: to discover connections "between the unconscious and the exterior natural world, emphasizing the beauty inherent in disorder." And in this she succeeds.
Hanna Melnyczuk
Synthetic Garden, 2022
Paper, wire, maps
Detail of Synthetic Garden (Duck Pond), 2022
Paper, wire, maps, found objects
Douglass, 2020
Paper
Emissions, 2023
Paper, wire, thread
Pending, 2019
Paper
Karen Margolis works on paper and sculpture installations weave material and space into porous, breathing structures that evoke a precarious balance between vulnerability and resilience. She has shown her work in numerous solo exhibitions across the country. In 2023, she created an installation for Amtrak’s Metropolitan Lounge in Moynihan Train Hall in New York City. In 2024, Margolis completed a large-scale public commission for Amtrak’s Metropolitan Lounge in Union Station, Washington DC. This year, Margolis will be featured in The Craft of Paper: Contemporary Takes on Tradition at the Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, Atlanta, GA, and “A view all their own” at Hollis Taggart, New York City. Her work can be viewed at https://www.karenmargolisart.com/
Hanna Melnyczuk received an MFA from Mass College of Art. Her work has been exhibited at numerous venues, including a one person exhibit at Art Space in Maynard, MA, and Fitchburg State University, MA. She has participated in group exhibits at the University of Massachusetts Lowell; Mahoney Gallery; The Gallery at the Piano Factory in Boston; The Danforth Museum in Framingham; Tufts Gallery; The Brush Art Gallery in Lowell; Newton Art Center; Worcester Art Center; Concord Art Association; The Umbrella Arts Center; and other regional galleries and institutions.Hanna published a series of drawings about the war in Ukraine in her book Don’t Close Your Eyes (Arrowsmith Press, 2023). In 2023, Hanna curated the traveling exhibition Don’t Close Your Eyes, featuring the work of Ukrainian artists in response to the war in Ukraine. Hanna teaches at the University of Massachusetts and Fitchburg State University. Her work can be viewed at hannamelnyczuk.com