FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 14, 2017
Contact: Tamar Russell Brown — 978.425.6290
FITCHBURG, Mass. — Darcie Lee Hanaway is someone that Gallery Sitka owner Tamar Russell Brown has been following for a long time. Gallery Sitka is thrilled to have an opportunity to show her work in Central Mass.
Ms. Hanaway is a whimsical, mixed-media artist who takes inspiration from time, nature, and their cycles and patterns. When Ms. Hanaway makes art, she uses “an intuitive process,” she says. “There’s no end-product in mind.” Her art is typically nonrepresentational and about community, family, and love, and what those things mean to her. Her adventures — from having a baby to living in an Airstream trailer — take on meaning and significance that seem to change continually as life goes on.
Encouraged to create art since infancy, the Rhode Island native has created art pieces ranging from installations made of old ventilation systems and harvested street signs in her old studio, to organic gardens for her clients, to a restaurant she helped build from scratch in Delray Beach, Fla. One might think that Ms. Hanaway has done it all! She travels often, creating art with different people to keep herself inspired. She does whatever it takes to “generate creative energy and share it.”
In 2007 Ms. Hanaway moved to Martha’s Vineyard, where she truly discovered something essential about the nature of time, thanks to the island’s cyclical tourist season. It is here that we find the Airstream that she lives in and which has taught her so much about the true meaning of “home.” She finds that “living simply makes my life richer. The less I own, the more value I assign to the items I keep.” Ms. Hanaway loves to make art outdoors, as it allows her to create art based on her feelings and her environment. Her creations originate from a primal sense rather than from rigid technique.
The show will also feature the works of two New Hampshire artists whose artwork complements Ms. Hanaway’s work, Melissa Richard and Angelique Ward. Ms. Richard’s new work, created this past winter, is an “exploration of emotion through color and texture,” using mixed media, mostly acrylic and collage. Much of her work examines relationships. It also explores emotions “that don’t necessarily have words.” Inspired by abstract expressionism, her art has helped her work through many of her own internal struggles. Ms. Richard is an art teacher and participates in art shows throughout New England. She is represented by Gallery Z in Providence, R.I.
Angelique Ward is a self-taught artist who hails from Hudson, N.H. She says that her passion for the arts has ranged from “performing onstage as a singer and in theater pieces, to writing poetry, to creating two-dimensional artworks in acrylic and mixed media.” She enjoys blending different art forms, particularly in assemblage, a three-dimensional medium that employs one or more boxes rather than a flat canvas. This method of storytelling is a deeply personal medium that “sets the stage” for her unique poetic mystery.
The show is expected to present big, bold, edgy artwork that will inspire thought about the subjective world within us and the objective world outside of us. Ms. Hanaway and her colleagues are excited to bring a fun, gypsy-like spirit to Fitchburg this summer and invite all to enjoy the exhibition, which will run from June 3 through August 1 at Gallery Sitka, 454 Main Street in Fitchburg. The public is welcome to attend the opening reception on Saturday, June 3, 4 – 6 p.m.
