Abstract Vocabulary

Standing in the middle of Eastman Lake, Rochester, New York
Standing in the middle of Eastman Lake, Rochester, New York

Lake Ontario is the only one of the Great Lakes with some open water and if the cold continues as expected it too will be frozen over in other week. The lake looks fantastic but don’t look too close. An RIT kid may have fallen off the ice covered Charlotte pier this week and disappeared. Peggi and I skied across Eastman Lake this afternoon, trusting that it was completely frozen over. I took this photo from the middle of the lake.

The best part of Margaret Explosion’s gig at Mercer Gallery was hearing the talk Carole d”Inverno gave at the opening of her amazing show. Carole takes a place (in this case, Rochester) or an event as a starting point. She gathers multiple layers of information about the place, the building blocks of a visual vocabulary and at the breaking point she works from memory creating sketches and then these beautiful paintings.

She says she “is not a non-objective painter.” All the sketching clears a lot of stuff away so when she gets to the painting she doesn’t try to recreate the sketch but tries to stay in the moment using her newly found abstract vocabulary. We had dinner with Carole the following evening and followed up with the “in the moment” part of her delightful process.

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A Way Of Saying

Poster for Carole d’Inverno Mercer Gallery art show
Poster for Carole d’Inverno Mercer Gallery art show

If I understand this, Seattle artist, Carole d’Inverno, has new work on display at MCC’s Mercer Gallery that is based on her impressions of Rochester, a city she has never set foot in. This, from her bio; “To prepare for a new series, I extensively research a place, a time period, an event. From the information gathered, I develop an abstract vocabulary of images.” Well, she should be in town today, the coldest day of a frigid winter, her opening is tomorrow night, and I can’t wait to see her take on our fair city.

We are so happy to have been asked to play at Tuesday’s opening for “A Way of Saying”. There’s an artist talk at 4:30 and Margaret Explosion plays 5:30-7. Hope you can stop out and see the show. Here is a preview.

Carole’s husband will not be there. He has a gig in Oxford Mississippi.

From Sunday’s paper:
Seattle artist Carole d’Inverno presents “A Way of Saying,” her abstract pencil works on paper, from Feb. 24 through March 20 at Monroe Community College’s Mercer Gallery, 1000 East Henrietta Road, Brighton. The show features some “intuitive and abstract of the facts” based on d’Inverno’s research into this exotic new city that would be playing host to her work, Rochester. Her artist talk is at 4:30 p.m. Feb. 24, with a reception afterward and music by Rochester’s Margaret Explosion, taking the event further into the avant-garde. She’ll also present a workshop at 10 a.m. Feb. 26 and a lecture 6 p.m. Feb 26. It’s all free, except for the workshop, which will have a charge. Rochesterians may be familiar with d’Inverno’s husband through his work at the Xerox Rochester International Jazz Festival, the guitarist Bill Frisell.
-Jeff Spevak, Democrat & Chronicle

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