Angle Of Repose
June 26 - July 25, 2021
Opening reception: June 26, 4 - 6pm
Angle of Repose is a 1971 novel by Wallace Stegner, in which a wheelchair-bound historian narrates the life of his grandmother, Susan Burling Ward, a well-born artist from New York who follows her husband as he pursues a mining career in the frontier-era American West. As Susan struggles to find meaning and purpose in her life and maintain connections to her previous “civilized” existence, she experiences the transcendent beauty and brutality of the landscape in this moment of expansion, which she processes through religious writing and drawing. Stegner titled the book after a technical engineering term rich with allegorical meaning: the angle of repose is the steepest angle at which loose material will hold still and stable. We see the phenomenon illustrated everywhere in our world: in harvested crops and tilled soil; in gravel pits, extracted minerals, and wasted mounds of mining tailings; from mountain-like sand dunes to the tiny piles of dirt displaced by ants.
Neither neutral nor romanticizing, the works in this exhibition offer brief moments of subjectivity and stillness as artists translate the landscapes that surround them using varying approaches to gesture, color, and material. Much like Stegner’s protagonist, these artists rely on intimate, extended engagement with the landscape to render both its immediacy and its ultimate, sometimes overwhelming unknowability.
Eric Aho
Colin Brant
Andrew Cranston
Lois Dodd
Hank Ehrenfried
Frankie Gardiner
Mike Glier
Andrew Holmquist
Amy Kim Keeler
John McAllister
James Morse
Eleanor Ray
Peter Shear
Michelle Stuart
Martha Tuttle
Also on view: works by Pamela Fraser
Installation view, Angle of Repose, Poker Flats, Williamstown, Mass., June 26 - July 25, 2021.
Installation view, Angle of Repose, Poker Flats, Williamstown, Mass., June 26 - July 25, 2021.
Martha Tuttle, The Rock Hut; Leadville, CO, 2021, wool, silk, dye, graphite, pigment, 46 x 31 in.
James Morse, Mud Lake Spring, 2021, oil on wood, 11 x 13 in.
James Morse, Hayfield, 2021, oil on wood, 13 x 17 in.
Peter Shear, Mountains and Waters I, 2020, oil on canvas, 18 x 21 1/2 in.
Installation view, Angle of Repose, Poker Flats, Williamstown, Mass., June 26 - July 25, 2021.
Installation view, Angle of Repose, Poker Flats, Williamstown, Mass., June 26 - July 25, 2021.
Hank Ehrenfried, The "Prison House;" August 23, 2020, 1:28pm, 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 in.
Hank Ehrenfried, Fort Greene Park; February 5, 2021, 12:37pm, 2021, oil on linen, 11 x 14 in.
Eric Aho, Nocturne, 2020, oil on canvas, 22 x 24 in.
Eric Aho, July Fireflies II, 2020, oil on canvas, 22 x 24 in.
Installation view, Angle of Repose, Poker Flats, Williamstown, Mass., June 26 - July 25, 2021.
Lois Dodd, Back Deck and Elm Tree, 2017, oil on masonite, 19 x 15 in. Copyright Lois Dodd, courtesy Alexandre Gallery, New York.
Mike Glier, Selections from Field Notes series, 2019, oil on arches paper, varnished, mounted on panel, 12 x 16 in. each
John McAllister, splendors sought halt, 2020, oil on canvas, 23 x 18 in.
Installation view, Angle of Repose, Poker Flats, Williamstown, Mass., June 26 - July 25, 2021.
Installation view, Angle of Repose, Poker Flats, Williamstown, Mass., June 26 - July 25, 2021.
Installation view, Angle of Repose, Poker Flats, Williamstown, Mass., June 26 - July 25, 2021.
Installation view, Angle of Repose, Poker Flats, Williamstown, Mass., June 26 - July 25, 2021.
Eleanor Ray, January, Dusk, 2021, oil on panel, 6 1/2 x 8 in.
Amy Kim Keeler, Against All Odds, 2020, cotton thread and corrugated cardboard, 8 x 10 in., 12 1/2 x 14 1/2 in. framed
Frankie Gardiner, In an Afternoon, 2019, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 in.
Frankie Gardiner, One Day, 2021, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 in.
Frankie Gardiner, Overcast, 2019-21, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 in.
Peter Shear, Fill, 2019, oil on canvas, 12 x 12 in.
Peter Shear, Bronze, 2020, oil on canvas, 10 x 10 in.
Colin Brant, Reflection/Trees, 2021, oil on canvas, 30 x 34 in.
Andrew Holmquist, Elysian Park 3, 2021, oil on canvas, 18 x 15 in.
Andrew Holmquist, Elysian Park 2, 2021, oil on canvas, 32 x 40 in.
Viewing room, installation of works by Pamela Fraser, Poker Flats, Williamstown, Mass., June 26 - July 25, 2021.
Pamela Fraser, With Gingko, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 20 in.
Pamela Fraser, With Nasturtium, 2018, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 in.
Pamela Fraser, Crimson Peeking, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 16 x 16 in.