Linda Schwalen: Nature Morte will open to the public on May 25, 2002 at the Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA). Featuring a selection of Schwalen’s most recent mixed-media photographs, the exhibition continues the museum’s annual summer series highlighting the work of regional artists. The artist, a Williamstown resident, will give a gallery talk about her work on Wednesday, June 19 at 12:30. The event is free and the public is invited to attend. The exhibition will remain on view through September 29.

“Nature morte,” literally translated as “dead nature,” is the French term for still life. Indeed both “still life” and “dead nature” intersect in Schwalen’s manipulated photographs of trees, brush weeds, skulls, gravestones, insects, nuts, stones, fruits, and flowers. Building up and reworking the surfaces of her photographs, Schwalen creates multiple layers of experience and meaning. In a number of the works on view including “Plane Trees: Frankfurt am Main” and “Nine Views of Minneapolis,” natural forms are obscured and abstracted as they emerge through coatings of powdered graphite that have been rubbed into the surface of the traditional landscape photographs. The layers of graphite alter the atmosphere of the original photographs, at times making them dull and murky and sometimes highly reflective, but always adding a sense of mystery.

In the series “Nature Morte,” the artist cuts two different color photographs of still life objects into perfect 1/8-inch wide strips and reassembles them together in an alternating pattern. The resulting images appear slightly out of focus, like reflections in the shimmering surface of a pond. In the piece “Bennington,” Schwalen creates a screen of tiny white correction fluid dots between the viewer and black and white photographic images of gravestones in a Bennington, VT cemetery. The added layer of marks alters the depth of field of the original image, making it difficult to know which objects are in front or behind one another. Complex surfaces such as these together with the intimate scale of Schwalen’s work encourage viewers to take their time and investigate each image closely in order to decipher the underlying, sometimes even hidden, subject matter.

Linda Schwalen was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and received both her BFA and MFA from the University of Minnesota. She has exhibited locally at the Mead Art Museum, at Amherst College, MA, and at the Tunnel City Gallery in North Adams, MA.

A portion of the museum’s general operating funds for this fiscal year has been provided through grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, a Federal agency that fosters innovation, leadership, and a lifetime of learning, and from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. The Williams College Museum of Art is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, from 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is free and the museum is wheelchair accessible.

The Williams College Museum of Art is a participating member in The Vienna Project, a collaboration among eleven arts and cultural institutions in the Berkshires.

Contact: Jonathan Cannon, Public Relations Coordinator
413.597.3178; WCMA@williams.edu