Carolyn Evans : Katrina's Third Birthday, No Cake
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Smash Hit (detail), 2006 |
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New England Currents at the Danforth Museum
September 6, 2008 — October 19, 2008
Opening Reception Saturday, September 13, 6 - 8 pm
Gallery Talk Sunday, September 7, 3 p.m. and Wednesday, September 24, 12 pm
About the Exhibit
Colorful and expressive paintings explore memories of a childhood spent fishing the Louisiana Gulf coast with the artist’s father, or wandering the port of New Orleans to view the small boats and large container ships that filled the Mississippi. Houses sit perched at the edge of these watery vistas-- reoccurring symbols of a safe place where children can be nurtured and grow.
Ironically, the artist couldn't wait to leave her childhood home. A conflicted relationship with her parents enforced Evans' desire to leave a society that she saw discriminating against Blacks and against her personally-- both as a Jew and as a woman. "From the age of fifteen, I was ready to run away," she remembers when describing her life before coming north for college. "I couldn't wait to be free."
Settling outside Boston to raise her family, Evans was determined to make her home on a hill "a joyous, hopeful place," to which her children might "want to come back." But in her mind, she nursed the idea of returning to New Orleans, an idea that began to seem possible when her mother died and her childhood home stood empty. But not five months after her mother's death, Hurricane Katrina removed this possibility. Evans sold what remained of her flooded home, filled with doubt that she'd ever return there to live. But memory is a powerful thing, forcing the painter to meditate on deceptively naive shapes that make loss visible.
Although her pictures tell a story, we must be mindful that narrative is only part of what Evans sets out to explore. Evans is fond of saying that painting is "an act of desperation." Recent work reveals that she is an artist desperate to remember--and equally desperate to forget. In an attempt to make light of what was an ecological and emotional disaster, she refers to Katrina as "the show of shows." Smash Hit describes the flood's dramatic impact in the glow of a red sun setting between battered palms. In painting after painting, Evans describes a complex idea of home as a place where you might not wish to physically return, but are devastated when return is no longer possible.
(excerpts from forward by Katherine French, Director, Danforth Museum of Art)
Related Articles
"An artist finds her place in the eye of the storm"
By Steve Maas, The Boston Globe, September 30, 2008
Visit the artist’s website: www.evansartstudio.com
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