Three Solo Exhibits Open at Dowling Walsh Gallery

Dowling Walsh Gallery will host three solo exhibitions in July featuring work by Cig Harvey, Jenny Brillhart and Marilynn Gelfman Karp.

The gallery will host an artist reception on opening day from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. July 3 and a gallery open house each Friday from 3 to 5 p.m. The shows run through Aug. 1.

Cig Harvey’s exhibition, “Eat Flowers,” is a feverish exploration into how things feel, as represented through photography. The profusion of color and nature is a visual reminder that we are alive, and embracing it celebrates the basic human desire to be surrounded by beauty. These new photographs aim to bombard our primal senses. They are riotous and gluttonous, explosive and dramatic, full of life yet somehow simultaneously suffocating and terrifying.

Harvey’s artistic practice seeks to find the magical in everyday life. It is deeply rooted in the natural environment and offers explorations of belonging and familial relationships. Her photographs and artist books have been widely exhibited and remain in the permanent collections of major museums and collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; the Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; and the International Museum of Photography and Film at the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York. She lives in Rockport.

Jenny Brillhart received a BFA from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and an MFA in painting from the The New York Academy of Art. She has shown her work in Berlin and Florida and in 2017 exhibited at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in a two-person show alongside artist Sara Stites. Brillhart is included in the 2019 deCordova New England Biennial. She lives and works in Stonington.

Marilynn Karp is a sculptor whose mixed-media, found object works are represented in collections nationally and abroad. She holds a doctorate in physics and aesthetics and has taught art and material culture at New York University for 42 years. Karp is the author of “In Flagrante Collecto: Caught in the Act of Collecting” (Abrams, 2006) as well as the forthcoming book “Uncorked: A Corkscrew Collection” (Abbeville, 2020). She has given interviews, presented papers, and appeared on panels at museums and universities on various topics within the purview of collecting. She is the president of the Anonymous Arts Recovery Society and a trustee and board member of the Preservation League of New York State. Karp divides her time between her New York City studio and a farmhouse in upstate New York.

“Immersed in the rural landscape, I found miraculously enlightening instances of the mergence of the natural and the manmade by birds and insects,” Karp says. “This has informed and adapted my eye to the bird’s eye view and the wasp’s stunning utilization of architecture and utility meters as habitats. I now play their game with their abandoned nests and turn the tables to invent what they might have done in different times and places. As an avid observer of material culture, my sculptures suggest that the impetus to acquire, organize and integrate is proof that the hunter-gatherer instinct is alive and well.”

Dowling Walsh Gallery is at 365 Main St., Rockland. Go to www.dowlingwalsh.com, or call 207-596-0084 for more information.