Lucy Mink To Open At New Kishka Gallery in WRJ
Lucy Mink To Open At New Kishka Gallery in WRJ
Artist Lucy Mink lodged herself in my brain and stayed there after I viewed an exhibition of her work at the now closed Aidron Duckworth Museum in Meriden NH. You can see if she’ll move into your mind and remain, as her work constitutes the very first exhibition at Kishka, a new art gallery in White River Junction VT.
Gallery Co-Director Ben Finer described Mink’s paintings as “A flowing landscape intersects abruptly with an ambiguous geometric form. Shifting brushwork meets the hard edge of a color field. An interior space gently melts into ether and suddenly you’re floating in the curious waves of an undulating pattern. The pleasure of these works is in their inability to be simple, straightforward.” That seems to be the through line from earlier to present works. In an interview of several years ago (Beer With a Painter by Jennifer Samet), Mink herself put it like this:
With social media, and media in general, there are a vast amount of stories out in the world. But painting always holds mystery, and you can keep coming back to it. Like the poetry and lyrics I am drawn to, I don’t need answers for them, or plots, or outcomes. I like vague.
The planes shift, the perspective changes. The title of any individual work may (or may not) provide hints to its meaning or inspiration. In addition to being drawn in visually, Mink’s lowercase titles alone are food for thought: “on top of it,” “blush,” “came out of nowhere,” “closer than you know,” and the one that riveted me at the Duckworth: “I needed a place to put some things that we weren’t allowed to talk about.”
Kishka, which is actually called Kishka Gallery and Library, is not only new to White River Junction, it is an original concept created by the co-directors Ben Finer and Bevan Dunbar. In a recent interview with Daybreak, Finer opined that galleries are often not welcoming spaces. He wanted to slow down the viewer’s experience. “We came up with making it more like a reading room: You could give the work on the walls context, you could create a space where people could linger longer. We thought of books as a great entrance into that world. We're going to have a library of books, but we're also going to build it through asking the artist to curate three to five books that are in reference to the show on the wall. The books will give the artist an object outside their show that gives insight into their work . . .”
“Lucy Mink - “Good, just do it” - opens Friday, June 4, 2021 and runs through Sunday, June 27. There will be an opening reception Friday, June 4 from 5pm – 8pm. Kishka Gallery & Library is located at 83 Gates Street (in the space formerly occupied by Fat Hat Clothing) in White River Junction, Vermont. It is open Thursday – Sunday, 12 pm-8 pm and by appointment. For more information about the exhibitions, artists, and gallery please write to info@kishka.org or call 347-264-4808.
(photos courtesy of the artist)
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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.