Catamount Arts is pleased to showcase the work of Gail Boyajian in its Rankin Gallery as part of the exhibition Gerry Bergstein and Gail Boyajian: Uncovered, on view through October 27, 2018. Concurrently, a selection of Gail Boyajian’s 3-dimensional work, will also be on view at St. Johnsbury’s Fairbanks Museum from September 15-December 31, 2018. On Saturday, September 22 from 5-7 pm, a wine and cheese reception will be held at Catamount Arts with remarks at 6 pm by artists Gerry Bergstein and Gail Boyajian. All are welcome to attend.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: Inspired by growing concern over threats to our environment, artist Gail Boyajian has created an installation depicting extinct birds, the artistic remnants of an apocalypse that has already occurred. Recalling a childhood desire to become a naturalist and memories of Victorian study collections, Boyajian’s birds perch uneasily from branches she’s crafted, identification tags dangling from their tiny claws. Birds are one of our most fragile species; their demise raises the alarm of an imminent danger and has long been a subject of Boyajian’s art. These sculptures of extinct birds were created using shreds of newspaper from the New York Times (which only uses biodegradable, soy-based ink), but nevertheless carry seeds of another kind of destruction—in the traces of text about current events that are still visible to the naked eye.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: Gail Boyajian (Cambridge, MA and Strafford, Vermont) attended the Slade School of Art in London before graduating with a BA from Tufts University in 1970. In 1976 she graduated with a graduate degree in architecture (MAarch) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA and worked as an architect before her return to painting in the mid 1980s as a way for her to imagine everything she cares about in the same view—buildings, people, animals and landscape. Inspired by the European Renaissance, 19th century American Luminism, and various strains of 20th century narrative style, Boyajian considers her landscape drawings and paintings to be “characters, created by the voices and ghosts of present and past inhabitants.” As such, they provide a dark commentary of the impact of contemporary life on humanity. Since 2016 she has focused on paper mache sculptures of extinct birds created from recycled newspaper—primarily the New York Times. “The daily news cycle is ever-present in my studio,” the artist has remarked.
Boyajian has taught at Harvard and MIT, as well as Philips Academy in Andover, MA. She is recipient of numerous grants and awards from the Massachusetts Arts Council, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Artist Resource Trust of the Berkshire Taconic Foundation, and others. Having exhibited widely in both galleries and museums, her work is included in the permanent collections of the Addison Museum of American Art, Andover, MA; the Duxbury Art Complex, Duxbury, MA; the Fitchburg Museum of Art, Fitchburg, MA; and the New Britain Museum of Art, New Britain, CT, as well as such corporate collections of Fidelity Investments and Wellington Management. For more information on the artist and her work, see https://gailboyajian.net/.