August 25 - September 7 2017

RICHARD DORFF | MEGAN HINTON | FORREST WILLIAMS | RICK WRIGLEY

Opening Reception: Friday, August 25, 6-8 pm

Richard Dorff

The Other Side, Keyhole

Richard Dorff is a visual artist and set designer working in the realm of sculpture and installation, and is currently the co-artistic director of Fort Point Theater Channel, and founding member of Atlantic Works Gallery in East Boston. He designed the sets for FPTC’s “Indiscreet Discretion”, “Hidden Faces of Courage”, and installation pieces for a production of “Krapp’s Last Tape” and ”In the Summer House”. Rick exhibited his installation, “Rock Scissor Paper,” at the Atlantic Works Gallery.

Rick has curated and created kinetic sculptures in response to sound, dance, and poetry performances for “inter-actions” at the Outside the Box Festival and the Fort Point Channel Center garage. He designed and constructed the set for “Jeanne, the Story of a Woman”, an opera by Mark Warhol and James Swindell, and exhibited an installation entitled “Teapot” at the Underwater Museum in East Boston. He continues to work on multi-media inspired projects. His latest sculpture, “The Other Side”, encouraged a performance piece entitled “Threw the Keyhole”, that will take place with members of FPTC here at AMP Gallery in August.

Megan Hinton

Gathering

“My recent work is a continuation of a painting project I began in 2011. These oil paintings represent gatherings of people that make up a singualr form. I approach these like an abstract impressionist to exentuate the appearance of a singular mass. These pictures suggest a secondary subject that exists outside of what is immediately seen on the painted surface. These groupings of people are interacting with something beyond the viewer’s sight.

The paintings are also relevent because of our current cultural trend towards polarization, conformity, and uprising. The ideas bring people together in groups and en mass to view or suggest something powerful. My intention is to convey the very essence of such formations without spelling out the details, of not only the form, but the individuals that are being encompassed within.”

Megan Hinton been exhibiting her work in New England and beyond for over fifteen years. Hinton holds degrees from Ohio Wesleyan University, The School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and New York University. Hinton has been awarded artist residencies from The Women’s Studio Workshop, The Vermont Studio Center, Nantucket Island School of Design, and Les Amis de la Grande Vigne in Brittany, France, and The Frans Masereel Centrum in Belgium. She has been the recipient of three local Massachusetts Cultural Council grants for recent exhibitions in Wellfleet, Massachusetts at Preservation Hall and The Harbor Stage Company. Her paintings are included in the permanent collections of The Cape Cod Museum of Art, The Provincetown Art Association and Museum, and The Artists Association of Nantucket. Megan is an art writer, educator, and avid traveler. She lives in Wellfleet, Massachusetts.

Forrest Williams

Ghosts

“For me these are haunted paintings. They are about the self. They depict isolated figures haunted by—-what? Ghosts? Memory? Death? Consciousness? They’re like stages upon which dramas play out, yet these are deeply interior worlds.

My admittedly weird inspiration started with “Whistler’s Mother.” That painting’s actual title is “Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1.” Though clearly a portrait, its title points to the real formal interest of the artist. For me the isolated figure, locked into a rigorous composition with a quite limited palette, suggests a lot of metaphorical possibilities.

So much of my own work is about isolation and internal worlds but at the same time formal concerns—composition, color, value, pattern—with which to ground those themes. Both the subject of a painting and the way the painting is made are of a piece. I am always interested in that place of tension between the containment and the expression of feeling, and in how to portray that visually. It’s almost like a secret is being found out and revealed.

My new paintings build partly on previous landscape work but now move the figures to the interior—both literally and psychologically. This is a nighttime world where stillness and quiet collide with existential drama. A world haunted by ghosts just outside, or just around the corner, or perhaps from within.”

Forrest Williams has shown his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the US and Canada. Current solo exhibitions include: 2017 “Ghosts”, 2016 “Lowlands” and 2014 “Arrival” AMP, Provincetown, MA; 2010 “Crossways” Marx & Zavattero, San Francisco, CA; 2007 “Porches” Heather Marx Gallery, San Francisco, CA; 2005 “Passage” Heather Marx Gallery, San Francisco, CA. Recent group exhibitions include: 2013-14 “Hello, Goodbye” Dolby Chadwick Gallery, San Francisco, CA; 2012 “Two Loves – Sex, Art, and the Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name” Kymara Gallery, Biddeford, ME; 2012 “SEEN” Visual Aid Gallery, San Francisco, CA; 2012 “New York Academy of Art Sixth Annual Summer Exhibition” Flowers, New York, NY; 2011 “Sea Change” Marx & Zavattero, San Francisco, CA; 2011 “The Elegance of Refusal” Gensler, San Francisco, CA; 2009 “Seldom Seen” Leslie/Lohman Foundation; New York, NY; 2009 “Figuratively Speaking” Lyons Wier Gallery, New York, NY; 2008 “Color Key” The Painting Center, New York, NY.

Rick Wrigley

Sculpture 3 and 4

“After 25 years as an art-furniture-maker and over 10 years designing and building houses, I am now finding new inspiration as a sculptor. Up until a few years ago, my creative process involved working within the tight constraints set by the function of the object or building I was designing. For instance, a successful design for a chair, a table, or especially a house, must meet a very particular set of functional criteria. In the case of a commission, the needs and desires of the client as well as the budget add further constraints.

For many years, I enjoyed the challenge of solving aesthetic problems within these types of strict parameters. The work required a discipline I was comfortable with — a discipline that, with time, became automatic for me. But I now feel motivated to move beyond the functional limits inherent in Craft and seek out new aesthetic challenges as an Artist, and that’s why my current focus is purely on sculpture.

I have observed a hunger for a tactile and sensuous experience with Art in our increasingly digitized world. My work is sketched and made by hand — all without the aid of computers. I believe this imbues the work with an emotional richness that would not otherwise be possible. My aim is to achieve a complementary relationship between overall form and sensuous detail.”

Rick Wrigley has shown his sculptural works in group shows at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (2013), and AMP Gallery, Provincetown (2016).

As an art-furniture designer and maker, Rick was a recipient of the Mass Cultural Council / New England Foundation for the Arts Regional Fellowship in the Visual Arts. He was a visiting instructor in the BFA program at The School for American Craftsmen, RIT, Rochester, NY. Rick has shown art-furniture in The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The Smithsonian Museum of American Art’s Renwick Gallery, Washington, DC; The American Craft Museum, New York City; The Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Montreal; The Milwaukee Art Museum; The Oakland Museum; The Flagler Museum, Palm Beach, Florida; the Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, Massachusetts, and The Cape Cod Museum of Art.

His work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian Museum of American Art’s Renwick Gallery, The Smith College Museum of Art, and The Boston Public Library. He has executed commissions for The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; The Springfield Museum of Fine Arts, The Legislative Office Building, Hartford, CT; The Babson College Interfaith Chapel, and the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan.

A LIVE GALLERY SPACE