OHT Gallery Boston

Previous Exhibits

Handwriting on the Wall

Maggi Brown, Judith Page, John O'Connor

March 7 - 29, 2003
Reception: Friday, March 7, 5:30 - 7:30 pm

This is the first in a series of exhibitions at O·H+T gallery that include work dealing with writing or text. It runs concurrently with "Words on Fire," the Boston cultural event marking the 70th anniversary of a massive book burning that took place in Berlin on May 10, 1933.

Maggi Brown's recent paintings deal with text in much the same way as they do imagery. Sometimes aligned to form vertical or horizontal bars, sometimes floating in a painterly field, her words (often taken from stream of consciousness thoughts) are as veiled and mysterious as her images. Looking to a range of influences for underlying connections, Brown reconciles the divergent to create unified visual statements.

Judith Page examines language and its relationship to history, both personal and regional. Raised in Kentucky, Page announces her affinity for the Southern Gothic tradition with her use of a cast of oddly malformed, pink figures presented as busts against a black background. These characters are in fact painted silhouettes from family snapshots, while the black backdrops are masked portions of diary entries. Portions of childish handwritten text remain to add a creepy poignancy to these already strange works.

John O'Connor's colored pencil drawings are schematic diagrams of systems and processes related to both familiar and esoteric disciplines (weather patterns, Chaos Theory, Rubrik Cube strategies, hair loss patterns). Combining these systems with personal ones (blood pressure readings, and weight and mood fluctuations), these idiosyncratic drawings engage the viewer with their complexity and their slightly manic energy.