"Traces of Time" opening at Dedee Shattuck Gallery

WESTPORT — "Traces of Time" runs from July 6 to July 28 at the Dedee Shattuck Gallery. Featuring the work of artists Jonathan Sharlin, Todd More and Richard Fishman, an opening reception will be held Saturday, July 6, from 5 to 7 p.m.

"Traces of Time" considers the artifacts of places, both specific and psychological.

Through sculpture (Fishman), painting (Moore), and photography (Sharlin), these investigations encompass questions on the nature of permanence, the ephemeral, scale, experience, and time. A shared connection to geology is where the idiosyncratic works of these artists meet and diverge.

Our regional landscapes and shorelines are defined by ledges, outcroppings, erratic boulders and field stones composed of granite, sandstone, puddingstone, and slate. This basic material of the earth has been crushed, submerged, exposed, scraped, and eroded. It has been melted, re-formed, exploded and buried by vast forces of pressure and heat and ice over incomprehensible measures of time. These actions are readily apparent in the abrasions, striations, folds, and cracks of the glacial shards and litter scattered throughout this area.

These geologic features anchor locations that are familiar. Their apparently obdurate stability is based on our brief sense of the passing of time, though attention reveals constant motion and change. Boulders on a beach are undercut by wave action and move. Ice in a fissure can fracture an outcrop. Smaller stones grind and wear, polished by sand and water. Such a shift in awareness informs a psychological and metaphorical dimension that is reflected in the materials, processes, and imagery of these artworks. They reference a core substance, perhaps suggestive of the alchemists' prima materia, perhaps as a projection of the unconscious. The material is pulled by the weight of the earth, seemingly of an opaque density. Yet the temporal, the transient and passing is always present. These activities, both geological and artistic, are palpable and inexorable.

Dedee Shattuck Gallery is located at 1 Partners Lane, Westport. Gallery hours are Wednesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Artist receptions and exhibitions are free and open to the public. For more information e-mail dedeeshattuckgallery@gmail.com; 508-636-4177.