New art league exhibits explore themes of memory, life and death
Inside the Rehoboth Art League’s Corkran Gallery, guests traversed through David Curtis’ post-apocalyptic paintings of surreal aquariums. The pieces explore Carl Jung archetypes, and themes of history, literature, religion and folklore. Curtis’ work is part of Under the Surface: Information, a collaborative exhibit with David Heatwole that opened Nov. 12.
Heatwole’s work also encompasses themes of history but differs in that it explores shifting planes of information and the Mandela Effect, he said. Some of his pieces are abstract and other pieces are realistic. “I am contemplating how everything is just shifting ... we are all shifting planes of information, but we are all connected,” he said.
Inside the Tubbs Gallery, Constance McBride displayed her clay sculpture work titled, The Lonely Girls, which started as a project about her mother’s experience with Alzheimer’s. The project expanded to the other women in the nursing home who lived with her mother, and McBride hopes her work can shed light on the disease. “They’re alive, they’re still here, they’re just different,” she said. “[The Lonely Girls] is part of my mother’s legacy and giving voice to these lonely girls who lost their voices. They had big lives.”
McBride uses clay to make her pieces because it’s a way to connect with ancestors who have passed. “When I work with clay, I’m always thinking about how as human beings, we are of the earth and we go back to the earth. [Our ancestors] are in clay and we are in the clay.” McBride’s most recent piece depicted her grandmother, whom she had never met. “When I make with clay, the person starts revealing themselves to me. It’s important to me to have them come out as their own personality. [Clay] is a direct connection to our ancestors, and they want to come out and reveal themselves to us,” she said.
Curtis’ work also encompasses themes about the cycle of life. “I am interested in how history repeats itself. If I don’t know what I am going to do, I start with a skull – death, and then I bring life from it,” he said.
Both exhibits will be on display at the Rehoboth Art League’s Henlopen Acres campus through Sunday, Dec. 12.
