A Sculpture Park at Sandy Spring Museum
June 21 - October 6, 2018
Presented by the Washington Sculptors Group (WSG) and Sandy Spring Museum (SSM)
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Lynda Andrews-Barry, Adam Bradley, Elsabe Dixon, Bobby Donovan, Mary Annella Mimi Frank, Billy Friebele, Chas. Foster, Howard Goldfarb, Sanzi Kermes, Elizabeth Miller McCue, Sharon Pierce McCullough, Donna McCullough, Mike Shaffer, Diane Szczepaniak, Ira Tattelman, David Therriault, Michael Thron, Jenny Wu
EXHIBITION JUROR: Cecilia Wichmann, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at The Baltimore Museum of Art.
OPENING RECEPTION:
Thursday, June 21 from 6-9 pm.
JUROR TALK:
Talk and Tour with Cecilia Wichmann: Sunday, July 8 at 3:30 pm
PERFORMANCE:
Performance by Sinclair Dance, TogethR A Part: Sunday, July 29 at 7 pm
Now in its third year, the Washington Sculptors Group’s Annual Artina exhibition at Sandy Spring Museum will provide a sylvan venue for sculptors to display their work. Artists were invited to propose works that respond to the museum’s rustic grounds, exploring the landscape as a vehicle for human introspection. How does the outside world shape one’s inner life, and how do our imaginations, both collective and private, filter our perceptions of the environments we encounter? Artists were encouraged to engage the topography of the site, to incorporate time as an element of their work, and to elicit direct participation by visitors. The result is a sculpture garden created on the museum’s seven-acre, woodsy grounds.
The exhibition, juried by Cecilia Wichmann, features 18 works by 18 artists that reveal the varied and poetic ways humans can come to make and know ourselves in relation to our ideas about nature. Visitors will find numerous ways to connect with the work on view, from adding objects to an interactive, open-air museum to feeling the breeze from an oversized rocking chair. Human beings are, after all, inextricable from the natural world—part of its larger ecology. This exhibition is an open invitation to spend time with this concept, engaging it with all our senses. This outdoor exhibition will remain on view through October 6, 2018.
In thinking through the relation between introspection and the natural world, we might look to the poet William Wordsworth for one possible model. In his poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” Wordsworth reflects on the power of natural scenes and objects to remain in our memory and imagination. After seeing a “host of golden daffodils,” the poet describes how
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
ABOUT THE JUROR:
Cecilia Wichmann is Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at The Baltimore Museum of Art. Prior to joining the BMA in fall 2017, Wichmann led the University of Maryland's Stamp Gallery, an experimental exhibition space for contemporary art, and served as curator and advisor of its innovative Contemporary Art Purchasing Program.
Sandy Spring Museum
17901 Bentley Road
Sandy Spring, MD 20860
www.sandyspringmuseum.org
Tel. (301) 774-0022
Open Hours: Wednesdays–Saturdays from 10 am–5 pm
Free admission
Grounds are accessible any time.
