ILLUSTRATIONS | SECOND SHOWING FRIDAY September 8 6-8pm
Join us for the second showing of selected works by Mathew Bonneau, Polly Fiveash, Mark Luiggi, and Maggie Nowinski, and enjoy live jazz music by Rob Fontana!
*Masks are optional
Illustration: A visualization or a depiction made by an artist; an image of things seen, remembered or imagined, using a graphical representation.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Mathew Bonneau
Matthew's work is a loose study of people, faces, and typography. His drawings focus on human expression, and serve as brief vignettes into the characters he is portraying. This is a collection of lighthearted, visual snacks that intends to be an intersection of the sources from which it is inspired: Americana, hip-hop culture, and fantasy.
Matthew Bonneau is an illustrator and musician based in Northampton, MA. He bounces around between analog and digital projects, and his recent obsession with the fantasy genre has been creeping its way into his work. You can find him in town eating bread or walking his sweetheart of a dog.
Polly Fiveash
Polly’s more recent collages and drawings explore the female body, human energy flow, trauma and magical transformations.
Polly Fiveash lives in Florence, MA and has worked for many years as a psychiatric nurse, and as a mom. She is also a visual artist and singer-songwriter. She recently completed a master’s degree in nursing, and is about to start working in a new role as a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner. Her son Leo recently informed her that he believes her to have a 3-part soul: 1/3 human, 1/3 dog, 1/3 Icelandic pony. She aspires to more fully manifest this proposed 3-part soul through creative work, stubborn honesty, dark humor, silliness-energy, caring for others, and being in nature.
Mark Luiggi
Mark Luiggi is a Massachusetts artist whose paintings and clocks appear in private collections throughout New England including those of André Previn and other notable collectors. In addition to years as a graphic designer, watercolor artist and clockmaker Mark has shown in numerous exhibitions in New England during his thirty plus year career. He was a member/exhibitor at The Society For Arts and Crafts in Boston (93-99) and has shown his work in galleries from Maine to Cape Cod.
My work exists in the netherworld between Fine Art and Illustration. Throwing in a dash of humor places me in not quite either category. Nevertheless, over the years I’ve found a groove and have been lucky to connect with audiences in both worlds. Basically a watercolor painter I have explored a number of directions: traditional watercolors, editorial illustration, humorous illustration and a technique where I paint on paper glued to wood and cut out to create three dimensional paintings/sculpture.
Here’s a favorite quote regarding the dichotomy between Illustration and Fine Art:
"That's not art, that's illustration. Everybody is an artist these days. Rock and Roll singers are artists. So are movie directors, performance artists, make-up artists tattoo artists, con artists, and rap artists. Movie stars are artists. Madonna is an artist because she explores her own sexuality. Snoop Doggy Dog is an artist because he explores other people's sexuality. Victims who express their pain are artists. So are guys in prison who express themselves on shirt cardboard. Even consumers are artists when they express themselves in their selection of commodities. The only people left in America who seem not to be artists are illustrators.” From The Education of An Illustrator, Edited By Steven Heller and Marshall Arisman,Allworth Press © 2002
Maggie Nowinski
Selections from “Divoc: Daily Drawings (March 13, 2020 – March 14, 2021)
Mixed media on Rives BFK, 11” x 14”
From March 13th, 2020 to March 14th, 2021, Nowinski embarked on her Divoc Daily Drawings project. This year-long endeavor served as a powerful unit of measurement for our personal histories and memories. The project's duration of a year and a day acknowledged that the events of 2020 are ongoing, and we continue to process, stretch and grapple with them from them day by day.
Being restricted from working large scale in her studio, the Daily Drawings project provided Nowinski with immense freedom in visual expression. The only parameters were that each drawing had to be on 11” x 14” paper, primarily on Rives BFK, and use black and white media for the imagery. Anything could serve as a prompt, from the mundane to the imagined, such as observed botanical bursts of spring, Covid graphs in newspapers, personal experiences, social justice movements, and more. The pages accumulated and were housed together in clamshell boxes until they were displayed in their entirety in September 2021. This selection at Click is only the second time these drawings have been shared with the public in person. You can find documentation of them all on www.maggienowinski.com
Maggie Nowinski, MFA, is a multi-modal artist, educator and curator based in Western Massachusetts. She received a BFA in painting from State University of New York at New Paltz and an MFA in Visual Art Vermont College of Fine Arts. With a background in drawing, she creates installations that combine traditional and unusual media, such as printmaking, found objects, sound, audio, and performative processes. Her work explores somatic responses to environment, internal and external passageways, and collected disturbances through imagined specimen drawings that depict abject human-botanical entities. Nowinski's practice is informed by an awareness of the conceptual and political inevitability of art making, as well as a love for repetition, daily mark-making, and long walks in the woods. She frequently collaborates with other visual artists, dancers, sound artists, and poets on projects that push the boundaries of traditional art forms.
Nowinski is also a dedicated teaching artist. She is currently full time faculty for the drawing program at Manchester Community College CT and a visiting lecturer of drawing at Smith College. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the United States and internationally, and she has received numerous grants for her contributions to the arts. Nowinski has an upcoming two-person exhibition in August with collaborator Alicia Renadette at OVERLAP Gallery in Newport RI and a solo exhibition in September at the Tremaine Gallery at Hotchkiss Academy in CT as part of an artist in residence invitation. You can find her works included in the group printmaking exhibition at Five Points in Torrington CT. She was recently featured in an artist spotlight called “Drawing (un)limited” in Art Spiel and on the Artist & Place Podcast. You can hear her speak about her recent installation A Whole Recollection here and other works in (413)Art. To learn more about her recent work, please visit her website at www.maggienowinksi.org and follow works in progress @maggienow.
CLICK respects and does not discriminate against people of any culture, religion, race, physical ability, sexual orientation, or gender identity.