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Hampden Gallery Announces Spring Exhibitions

January 29, 2024 Arts

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Gonzalo Silva, “Untitled”, 2022, ballpoint black ink on paper, 8.5” x11”
Gonzalo Silva, “Untitled”, 2022, ballpoint black ink on paper, 8.5” x11”

The Hampden Gallery will open its spring art exhibitions “FABRICATIONS and DREAMS,” by Cynthia Guild, and “Obsessive Compulsive Drawings,” by Gonzalo Silva, on Feb. 14. Both exhibits are scheduled to run through May 3.

The gallery will host receptions for both Guild’s collection of oil paintings and Gonzalo Silva’s drawings on Friday, April 5 from 5-7 p.m., with talks by the artists scheduled from.

The reception and talks are free and open to the public, and admission to the Hampden Gallery is always free.

The Hampden Gallery, located at 131 Southwest Circle, is a program of the UMass Fine Arts Center. It has a reputation as a launching pad for emerging artists working in all disciplines. The gallery is open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 1-5 p.m. and Wednesday 1-7 p.m. More information about the gallery and upcoming exhibits can be found at www.UMassFineArtsCenter.org/hampden.

“FABRICATIONS and DREAMS” juxtaposes two series of oil paintings and drawings. In one body of work, Guild presents industrial mechanical imagery representing logic. In the second body of work, she depicts dreamy, snowy alpine scenes of nature that represent escape and reverie.

“At the onset of the pandemic, we all felt a sense of fear — some felt a fear of State surveillance as was happening in China,” Guild writes in her exhibition statement. “The first Towers I depicted, like ‘Sentinel #1,’ felt very appropriate to express this emotion. The ‘Structures’ became a write-in for mental and mechanical effort – the conveyor belt of the human brain at work.”

“At the other end of the spectrum are the alpine images,” she continues, “soft, white, ethereal at times, far away and dreamy. I found myself retreating to these web cameras often so I could spy on beautiful nature.”

A UMass alumna, Guild earned an MFA in printmaking with a focus on lithography and monotype in 1989. Now primarily an oil painter, she has carried over her printmaker’s interest in process and gesture. Currently teaching at Eastern Connecticut State University, Guild has exhibited widely in the United States and Cuba and was recently featured in an exhibition at the New Bedford Art Museum.

In “Obsessive Compulsive Drawings,” Chilean musician and artist Gonzalo Silva expands the utilitarian boundaries of the household ballpoint pen by detailing his compulsions on the back of 8.5”x11” stationery.

“These items are important to me, like summons, default notices, or support group meeting lists,” he says of the stationery.

Silva will perform original songs and play bass guitar in the Hampden Gallery Sculpture Garden for the UMass Fine Arts Center Spring Art Walk on Friday, April 19 from 3-6 p.m.

For Silva, playing bass and drawing with ballpoint ink are one and the same. In his exhibition statement, he writes, these are “two utilitarian mediums through which I channel my compulsive whims by either outlining a chord progression set to words, or by filling 8.5x11 stationery I receive in the mail with Bic medium ink. When writing songs or creating drawings I do not have a particular subject in mind. The work reveals itself through the process of creation.”

On the genesis of “Obsessive Compulsive Drawings,” Silva has noted, “In April of 2017, I had the sudden impulse while eating Chinese food on break between shifts busking to buy a black medium ballpoint pen from the bodega across the street for $1.25, and proceeded to draw instinctively and without judgment whatever I fancied and behind whatever paper was on hand.”

Silva began to nurture the practice as his morning routine, and found it helped him to become more serene and objective. “Each drawing increasingly [became] more dense and detailed, spurred by the personal challenge of seeing how exact I could become drawing with what I consider a blunt instrument.”

Born in Santiago, Chile, Silva immigrated to Massachusetts at a young age and studied electric guitar and songwriting at Berklee College of Music. “Obsessive Compulsive Drawings” is Silva’s first solo visual art exhibition.

Article posted in Arts for Faculty , Staff , Prospective students , Current students , Alumni , and Public

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