Montserrat College of Art announces Maine-based artist Karen Gelardi as the featured artist for the fifth year of their Emerging Artist series. The initiative invites a promising New England artist to install their first Boston-based solo exhibition in the 301 Gallery.

Curated by Montserrat Gallery's Assistant Curator Shana Dumont, the exhibit, entitled Terrarium, features Gelardi's newest body of work. Mixed media collages of organic foliage that grow from the gallery walls and floors reflect Gelardi's fertile imagination. Says Dumont, "Interestingly, though the botanical forms are stylized, they do not seem distant from nature; rather their hand-made appearance mimics the apparent disorder of an overgrown garden." The artist has staged the gallery to simulate the experience of a terrarium and includes several `ecosystems', naturalistic settings, enclosures and collections. Individual works are displayed within the show for close observation, discovery and classification, emphasizing the `gallery as terrarium' concept.

It is within this organic context that Gelardi explores the use of consumer goods and manufacturing technologies as artistic tools. Applying emerging production technologies, as well as traditional materials and techniques, the artist fashions customized goods that function as artistic materials or sculptural elements. She created Assembly as an experiment that investigates how nature, contemporary consumer culture, and technology overlap. An artist book project where potential art patrons can collaborate in the exhibit content, it consists of a series of three books whose pages are composed of identical black and white drawings of botanical or geometric designs. When participants purchase a book online or in the exhibit, it will be printed 'on demand' and displayed in the exhibit, adding to a growing, colorful stack of books (they will be mailed to their owners when the exhibit ends). The artist uses on-demand manufacturing because the scale of production is perfectly in synch with the demand. However, within the exhibit context, the print-on-demand books are sculptural objects, not functioning as books. The Assembly website: www.karengelardi.typepad.com/assembly.

What: Exhibit: Karen Gelardi: Terrarium

Where: Montserrat College of Art's 301 Gallery, 301 Cabot Street, Beverly MA

When: September 2 ?27, 2008. Hours: Mon- Fri 11 am - 2 pm and by appointment: 978.867.9604

Artist Reception: Wednesday September 10, 6 - 8 pm, 301 Gallery, 301 Cabot St. Beverly

Artist Talk: Wednesday September 10, 11:30 am Room 201, Hardie Bldg. 23 Essex St. Beverly

Artist Website: http://www.karengelardi.typepad.com/

Artist Bio:

Karen Gelardi has a BFA in Oil Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. She is a working artist and the Associate Creative Director for angela adams in Portland, Maine. Her recent solo exhibits include Components & Assemblies at the Leonard R. Craig Art Gallery, Unity College, Unity, ME, Karen Gelardi: Thicket, at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, ME, and Saco Bog, Front Room Gallery, South Portland, ME. Recent group exhibits include The Crossing of Time & Environment, Outdoor Micro-Installations Exhibition, Tainan County, Taiwan, Matter, SPACE Gallery, Portland, ME, and The Arts Formally Known as Prints, Space Gallery in Portland, Maine. She is a regular guest `smocker' at Andrea Zittel's smockshop, www.smockshop.org.

The exhibit and related events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.

Labels: Terrarium: Karen Gelardi