Although people can die at any time, they continue to live as if their lives were “fixed and unchangeable,” forming relationships, pursuing careers, and investing in housing.
This “permanent transience” is the theme of the recent exhibition at the Dartmouth Cultural Center, in partnership with the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Association of Women Artists.
“There is absolute peace and understanding, the mindfulness to accept that nothing lasts forever,” says the show program.
The 46 pieces in the exhibition will be on display at the Center at 404 Elm Street beginning Saturday, September 14. The exhibition features 25 artists from across the country, as well as from Dartmouth.
Lisa Goren of Boston said she has been a member of the National Association of Women Artists for about 15 years and appreciates that the art is made exclusively by women.
She said galleries often have very few pieces by women, “but here it’s all women and the strength and diversity of approaches, mediums and sizes – it’s just amazing.”
Goren added: “They’re all really strong, so it’s great to be part of this group.”
Goren’s watercolors on clay were on display at the cultural center and featured close-up images of ice from Alaska and Massachusetts. She said these pieces were inspired by earlier work she made after traveling to Antarctica.
“This one is from a glacier that was over 10,000 years old, and this one is from ice that was half an hour old,” Goren said of the two pieces. “So in a way it’s just about painting different things that, in this case, are monumental but fragile.”
Lisa Busnengo of Dartmouth said she is a newer member of the association, having only been inducted last March, calling this her first exhibition for the association.
Busnengo said her featured work, titled “Gong,” was so named because it reminded her of a gong one might find in a temple — although that was not the original intention of the painting.
She said she didn’t set much goals for her art and called it “automatic painting.”
“I just go with the flow,” Busnengo added. “I start with one thing and then go one step further and another step further. In fact, underneath the painting are two other paintings that I didn’t like but that I felt added more in a different way.”
She said the idea of reverberating sound and the way sound waves travel and “change the structure of everything they touch” gave the piece its place within the theme of “permanent impermanence,” adding that it made permanent objects different.
Pauline Santos, chairwoman of the cultural center, said of the exhibition as a whole: “I think it’s just wonderful. The artists are all women – that’s a statement.”
