In Form, Transform Truelsen looks at the way geology and humanity transform each other over time. Her images depict beautiful and complex strata, exploring layers of movement through both brief and endless time. Earth's remarkable history is recorded in its geological record, in the physical changes, eruptions, and erosions it has gone through. This unimaginable time scale of hundreds of millions of years is the ground for human existence. What the artist finds even more remarkable is the impact of humanity on the earth in spite of our relatively brief presence. Mindful of the recent ecological disaster, now buried as a deposit on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, Truelsen questions our depth of perception.
Truelsen's s etchings and collagraphs are pictoral excavations. Their layers invite the viewer to delve deep within their awareness, unearthing levels of meaning. She strives to make the viewers discover their own, new relationship with nature. Her collagraphs, a kind of bas-relief, are structures that echo and reinforce the idea of geological seams and levels. Like a tender creator, the artist carefully constructs her undulating and shimmering layers with both precision and discovery in the process. Truelsen's Cave series is subterranean in nature. Far from being dark places, her prints create spaces which vibrate with latent energy. Cave I, printed in blue and red tones, might also evoke the inside of a shell, or an earthen vessel of fired clay. Constructed deftly by the artist, these cave and den-like spaces belie the prints' two-dimensional nature.
Several of the prints in Form Transform are colored in rich earth tones including brown, umber and gold. With these tones, Truelsen creates vistas glowing and radiating with light. Like the 19th century American painters and printmakers before her, Truelsen's landscapes and geological explorations evoke the sublime and the wonder found in nature. In her scenes, like theirs, man is small in relationship to the environment and its awesome nature. Truelsen hopes that man and nature can remain in balance. She challenges the viewer to question whether humanity's footprint is fleeting in the time frame of eons, or whether our impact is increasingly irreversible. Are we like her juggler in Juggler and Jumper, who appears oblivious to his surroundings? Not if we take the time to look very closely.
Michal Truelsen has been a studio artist for more than twenty years, working in printmaking, drawing, and installation. Her work has been shown in galleries throughout the country and in Italy. She has twice been Artist-in-Residence with the University of Georgia Studies Abroad program in Cortona, Tuscany, where in she had a solo exhibit in 2004. Since moving to Lowell, Massachusetts in 2003, she has exhibited in numerous solo, juried, and invitational shows, including the four-artist show Eclectic: Drawn to Detail in 2008. Truelsen is a founding member of the Arts League of Lowell, and served as Director and Curator of the ALL Arts Gallery from 2005 through 2008.
119 Gallery has exhibited innovative printmakers for more than fifteen years. Past exhibits have included traditional etchings, lithographs and monoprints as well as digital prints on paper, vellum, plaster and aluminum. In addition to two-dimensional prints, the gallery has also exhibited anaglyphs, lenticular prints, and computer-modeled three-dimensional prints.
Reception February 26th, 4-6pm, followed by a brief artist's talk. Hours: Tues-Sat, 12-5 pm. For more information, see our calendar at www.119gallery.org
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