artstream is a spring break destination

With less expendable income and higher gas prices, Americans haven’t been taking off on road trips as often lately, but thankfully there’s plenty to see here on the Seacoast. Just in time for spring break, Artstream gallery in downtown Rochester presents “Seasonal Travel,” a new exhibition for the month of March with works by Amy Rice, Alena Hennessy and Molly Bosley.

Representing the theme most literally, Rice’s “I’ve Been Everywhere, Man” depicts a vintage travel trailer with striped awnings, sitting unhitched among trees cut from pastel maps. She also makes shapes with handwritten love letters and yellowed journal pages, which works especially well for a paper boat. The trailer image comes up again in a set of three, and maps are also used in other pieces, some set in wooden bowls for a completely different perspective that’s like the reverse of a fisheye camera lens. The wood of the bowl becomes the trunks of trees in the charming “Don’t Worry, I Have a Map” and the scenery is repeated on a girl’s skirt.    

Also on display are Rice’s signature spray-painted hand-cut stencils with hand-painted elements, this time on found objects including up-cycled wooden boxes, barn board and industrial wallpaper. Her bright zinnias and larger-than-life giant onion blooms are an optimistic foreshadow of spring. Rice’s female subjects all have a similar ethnic look, dark hair and rosy cheeks, giving the collection a traditional feel though made with contemporary techniques. Her stencils on wood call upon both old crafts and new signs, but are refined.        

Rice draws inspiration from childhood memories, both real and imagined (or just slightly exaggerated with time), the urban community in which she lives, vintage botanical prints, street art, gardening, random found objects, collective endeavors that challenge hierarchy, acts of compassion, downright silliness and things with wings, according to her artist statement.

Another artist with a new take on old thing, Bosley has found a place in the now trendy but always admirable reinvention of paper cutting. Locals fell in love with Elsa Mora’s papercuts at Three Graces in Portsmouth, where, by the way, Abby Glassenberg’s vintage fabric bird sculptures provide another timely spring display.

Bosley introduces herself to the area with her large-scale papercut pieces, along with an impressive collection of embroidery and mixed media collages and drawings on lacquered wood. Her papercuts are surprisingly sensual or otherwise evoking emotion, complex and narrative. While made from white paper, the shadows created by layering intricately cut pieces of paper add dimension. There are unexpected patterns and pairings of shapes, many of which appear within the spaces of others.

The repetitive imagery is meant to symbolize the reoccurring dreams that inspired the work. Bosley says in her statement that paper cutting is the ideal medium to recreate her dreams since it can hold the dichotomies of the detailed and stark, visible and ambiguous, familiar and imagined, hoped and feared.

Bosley’s hand leaves an impression in her work as she intentionally calls attention to real life and the objects that are important to us. For instance, she draws on or around a collage of found photographs or other discarded keepsakes. While she makes public shrines of secrets, the mementos remain sacred and sealed under a layer of lacquer on wood like some of the art in the thrift stores where she finds them. This, again, makes her work both familiar and fascinating.

Hennessy offers works on paper and wood with the delicate nature-based imagery that she is known for. She has long been fascinated with the outdoors and illustrating its creatures. That childlike sense of wonder is still evident in her imaginative depictions of birds and trees. According to her artist statement, in both art and in life, she appreciates “simplicity, stillness and a sense of little things relating to one another, all peaceful and quiet.”

Artstream is located at 56 North Main St., Rochester, 603-330-0333, www.artstreamstudios.com.