Hudson, N.Y. — We wore masks, of course. No white wine and plastic cups. Certainly, no hors d’oeuvres. This is the state-of-the-art opening in the new surge. Yet many people braved the frigid temperature and went inside — to encounter Martha Bone’s three commanding pieces from a new series: “Mapping the Invisible” at 510 Warren Street Gallery in Hudson.
These are large (5 feet by 7 feet) mixed media creations from natural and industrial materials. Actual hardware like metal screws is embedded in these seemingly real pieces of — what? She is interested in “how her images, at once abstract and figurative, probe the recesses of memory, forging a bridge between past and present, the human body and its connection with the primitive, the mythic, the imagined, and the feared.”
Pretty heady stuff.
Martha took on the surname Bone, after a childhood vision of floating bones, monoliths and mushrooms amid vaulted ceilings. “I had accessed some deep knowledge of nature and time.”
She describes her process of “constructing, obliterating, erasing and reforming so that shapes take on sculptural qualities and give birth to unexpected meanings. This is a continuing series on the permeable nature of time and the archetypes that we share.”
An artist and illustrator in Manhattan, she and her husband, Michael, moved from New York City to their weekend home in Columbia County after contracting COVID in early 2020. She has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Be sure not to miss this amazing show.
“Mapping the Invisible” runs till January 30, 2022 at the 510 Warren Street Gallery in Hudson, N.Y. 510warrenstreetgallery.com
Sonia Pilcer is a novelist, screenwriter and amateur painter. She teaches writing workshops in the Berkshires and in New York City.
