Limited Access: collaborative installation at Gallery A3

LIMITED ACCESS
Site Specific temporary installation by Valerie Gilman and Rebecca Muller
On View at Gallery A3 in Amherst MA

September 3-  26, 2020
Available for viewing through the windows all day, every day. This work changes dramatically with different lighting- early morning sun, mid day, evening.
Pop-up open-door viewings Friday and Saturdays 4-6 pm and by appointment.
Masks and social distancing required. ​

Artists Forum on Zoom
September 17, thursday, at 7:30 pm

register for zoom link

LIMITED ACCESS

Artists Valerie Gilman and Rebecca Muller present a site-specific ephemeral installation at Gallery A3. Over the past month they combined their artistic sensibilities and life experience, vision to this  exploration and dialogue. Diaphanous scrim punctuated by eroded metal lines float in space and articulate  complex and paradoxical sensations. 

A rawness is exposed by pulling back the curtain on our social and racial inequity and brings us to a state of  groundlessness during this time of deep cultural divide. The installation provides a contemplative space as we face an existential crisis, within our country, our world and planet.  Witness it with us.


VALERIE GILMAN
We begin with material and space- a delicate cotton scrim, a fogging, layering, concealing skin. Rusted metal rebar and rusted packing bands ribbon-like and mangled three steps removed from purpose, left to rot and reawakened in line and form. An activation of the volume of the gallery. A tension of light and weight, fluid and solid, line and plane, elegant and raw, surface and depth, history and present, repetition and singularity.

We cannot enter.
Spaces we used to have access to.

Are we not always obscured in some ways from each other?

​I am drawn to the metaphors of our moment and how I feel them resonate in my body. We now have a heightened sense of restriction and fear, with covid as with racial injustice. What is revealed in the windows of clarity, in the delicate skin of obfuscation? What new awareness comes as we breath into this moment, pause to notice the tensions and desires.
There is such beauty and pain in not knowing.

​

REBECCA MULLER
Space punctuated by hanging diaphanous mesh. Articulated by weighted metal lines and  rusted ribbons - drawing in space. Planes and line inhabit the space contained by ceiling, walls, and floor.
 
Here visible, now obscure. The eye moves in.
The mind begins its dialogue of naming: What is it? What does it mean? Why did? 
 
We enter the dialogue:  what if we do this… I’m curious to see what happens if… Let’s just try it. Not your space, not mine.
 
Reflect, observe, listen, clarify, change. Trans-form, Again and Again. In-Folding. Unfolding. In-folding. Unfolding.
 
Will I write a riff off what you say?
How do we heal our suffering body, community, planet, another?  How do we imagine and effect  change?  Fully see the unseen, discounted, dehumanized, seen through, erased?
 
Let us scrape off our old writing, make room for a new weaving through the still visible traces of  the past. Create a palimpsest time.

Artist Biographies
Val Gilman is an artist, teacher, and life and business coach for artists and creatives. She earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and taught for 14 years at the college level before returning to the pioneer Valley in 2013. She has an extensive show record both locally and nationally. In addition to site specific temporary installation such as this, she also creates pottery, ceramic and bronze sculpture and portraiture. She lives with her daughter (and 7 chickens, a cat, a fish and a guinea pig) in the lovely hills of Shutesbury. 
Rebecca Muller  is a full-time artist, writer, reader and lover of contemplation. She has a BA in English and MFA in sculpture from UMass Amherst. She works extensively in assemblage and  small and large installations, including numerous collaborations, and has shown extensively in the region.  She has lived and raised two children in the Valley for more than 40 years, and  worked for as many years as a grant writer, program developer and community change agent with several human service agencies in the region. Deeply curious, she  enjoys a  life of exploration and reflection.