CURATED BY LEAH TRIPLETT HARRINGTON AND MALLORY RUYMANN
January 5, 2023 – February 12, 2023
Opening Reception: Friday, January 6, 2023 from 6:00 to 8:00 PM
Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is pleased to present A Romance Of…, a two-personexhibition co-organized by Boston based curators Leah Triplett Harrington and Mallory Ruymann.
A Romance Of... explores the allure of wood in the practices of Cathy Della Lucia (Boston, Massachusetts) and Elspeth Schulze (Tulsa, Oklahoma). Approaching the material with care, Della Lucia and Schulze perform a love affair in their studios. In their tender hands, aided by chisels, saws, and progressive carving technologies, wood undergoes a metamorphosis. Suggesting artificial and biological forms, Della Lucia and Schulze’s works appear porous and fibrous, allowing expansion and contraction; breathing, as if a body. Wood is romanced into mimetic forms, coming alive to possibility of fleshy feeling, both hard and soft.
This exhibition centers on Romance as a curatorial thematic through which to explore the practices of Della Lucia and Schulze. Romance implies an object of affection through and alongside which we transform ourselves. Artmaking always involves an element of metamorphosis: paint, ceramics, ink, ideas—the materials of art shift in process, becoming something greater than what they were. Perhaps more so than other materials, wood possesses an untouchable formal agency in both its natural and human-altered states. Of nature and with potential to appear artificial; seemingly still and static yet constantly swelling and dispelling moisture; living, even after its death. Brimming with contradictory qualities, wood as a medium is anything but generic. The ineffability of wood offers a seductive proposition to artists concerned with materiality.
Together, these two artists embrace all the qualities of wood, carving new paths into the medium’s possibilities. A Romance Of…presents these artists together for the first time.
Programs will run through the duration of the exhibition and will include:
• First Friday Opening Celebration: Friday, January 6, 5-8 pm
• Instagram Live Exhibition Tour @abigailogilvy feat. Cathy Della Lucia: Saturday, January 21, 2-3 pm
• First Friday Closing Celebration: Friday, February 3, 5-8 pm
• In-Person Exhibition Panel moderated by Alison Croney Moses: Saturday, February 4, 2-3 pm
• Instagram Live Exhibition Tour @abigailogilvy feat. Elspeth Schulze: Sunday, February 5, 2-3 pm
Cathy Della Lucia, Spirit Amnesia, 2022. Plywood, hardwood, English porcelain, glaze, stain. 52 x 19 x 16 in.
About the Artists
Touch is a method for Cathy Della Lucia, though her hand is often imperceptible in her wood and clay-based works. Her sinewy, elongated forms, or more curving, thickset shapes, are crafted by gently fashioning these familiar materials into the abstract. Clay and wood are dynamic, remembering how they are touched, but also affected by their intrinsic and extrinsic conditions. Touch—of one element to another—also characterizes her use of modularity; all of her works join at multiple points that follow their own logic. This joinery is pointedly not permanent, with each connection following a pattern of uncertainty and precarity, but nevertheless achieving a delicate and determined settling. The individual elements of the whole, therefore, come together as one through touch, affecting each other for as long as the work remains.
Della Lucia received an MFA in sculpture from Boston University. She has recently exhibited at Piano Craft Gallery (Boston, Massachusetts), Able Baker Gallery (Portland, Maine), and internationally at Ara Art Center (Seoul, Korea) and Art Copenhagen (Copenhagen, Denmark).
Elspeth Schulze, Split Circle (graine à voler), 2022. Birch plywood, Flashe vinyl paint, stoneware with underglaze, gypsum cement, mason stain. 36 x 36 x 1.25 in.
Elspeth Schulze's process is one of porosity, hybridity, remembering, and mixing of form, material, and color. Schulze’s dimensional work is seemingly purely abstract, but deep looking reveals its dialogue with natural and architectural motifs. Schulze carefully controls the natural propensities of her chosen materials: clay, paper, mesh, fabric, and baltic birch plywood, working to manipulate its natural propensities. Often using a literal as well as a metaphorical frame, Schulze nevertheless accedes to her materials, blending her hand with their essential qualities.
Schulze has an MFA in ceramics from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and is currently artist-in-residence at the Tulsa Artist Fellowship in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work has most recently been exhibited at the University of Colorado Art Museum (Boulder, Colorado), Oklahoma Contemporary (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma), RedLine Art Center (Denver, Colorado), and Spring/Break NY.
About the Curators
Mallory Ruymann is a curator, art advisor, and art historian working with emerging artists in all media. She is the Managing Partner of art_works, an art advisory partnering with individuals and companies to build significant collections of contemporary art through a mission-driven lens. Her writing can be found in academic journals and local publications, including Big, Red & Shiny, The Rib, and Boston Art Review.
Leah Triplett Harrington is a curator, writer, and editor. As curator for Now + There, she facilitates the Public Art Accelerator and organizes large-scale public art commissions. She is also editor-at-large for Boston Art Review. Her writing has most recently appeared in that publication as well as ArtNet News, Sculpture, Public Art Dialogue, Flash Art, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, and others. As an independent curator, she has organized projects for Boston University Art Galleries, Trestle Gallery, Herter Gallery, and others. In 2021, she was the inaugural curatorial mentor for Praise Shadows Art Gallery and taught in the MFA program in Painting at Boston University.
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