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Danforth Museum of Art Presents Carol Keller: Erratics in the Wood

The Danforth Museum of Art presents Carol Keller: Erratics in the Wood open through February 6, 2011. Known primarily as a sculptor, Carol Keller has also been using collage as her drawing process since 2000. These 11 mixed media collages on wood panels represent her most recent work in this format.

Having moved from urban Boston to a rural community in the Berkshires, sculptor Carol Keller often finds herself in the woods. Frequent walks down narrow footpaths near her studio have led the artist past abandoned fields into deep forest where she has often been surprised by huge rocks seeming to rise out of nowhere. “The sight of them consistently lifts my mood,” she remarks. “They appear without warning, and seem both tentative and immoveable.”
Called “erratics” by geologists, these enormous boulders litter the New England landscape. Derived from the Latin “to wander,” the word “erratic” can also signify the unpredictable. However, scientists use the term to describe prehistoric rubble dropped from glacial ice flows, foreign material removed and deposited far from original locations. On the “hushed and private existence” of abandoned colonial roads, Keller has found inspiration for a new body of work.

Keller’s recent drawings and collage are not preparations for sculpture. Instead, they are intrinsic conversations with material. She finds pleasure in “working the elements…cutting out, or discovering shapes, in putting them up against each other.” This satisfaction is “opposed to painting or drawing directly on the paper,” and probably grows out of Keller’s history of making objects. But as a sculptor, she is interested in seeing where this new work will take her. “I don’t make these claims for my drawings,” she says. Like the massive, odd shaped rocks she’s discovered during long walks, these mixed media collages strike her “as anomalies of sorts…cropping up in this studio in the woods.”

Image: Untitled, 2009 mixed media on wood panels 70″ x 90″ Courtesy of the Artist and Nielsen Gallery, Boston, MA

The Danforth Museum of Art is dedicated to the celebration and creation of art. Established in 1975, the Museum is a non-profit, privately supported, public art museum whose primary purpose is to provide education in the visual arts for MetroWest through its collection of American art, exhibitions, Museum School and outreach programs in the community.

Danforth Museum of Art 123 Union Avenue, Framingham, MA 01702-8291 — 508.620.0050
www.danforthmuseum.org

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