artists get creative at the Lamont Gallery

The three artists with work on display at Phillips Exeter Academy’s Lamont Art Gallery are inspired by tradition, but have a new way of fitting in.

“Fittings: Works by Cat Chow, Milisa Galazzi and Ruth Borgenicht” runs through Jan. 30 in Exeter. During a gallery talk on Jan. 10, the artists explained how they fit their own approaches and ideas into art.

Chow transforms common materials in unexpected ways. She likes to disguise materials or use resources people don’t recognize at first glance. She made rope out of plastic wrap and weaved it over disks, then captured each in a steel cage with braided, nylon horsehair over the bars. This work, “36 Chambers,” is lined up in two rows, creating an aisle down the middle. Walking through, the plastic wrap is shiny and reflects light, becoming beautiful.

Beauty is a word that Chow uses cautiously, as opposed to craft. But she hopes her work has an element that draws the viewer in to spend time with it, “and perhaps that is beauty.” Getting to know the work is worthwhile. One finds out that the cages represent an overprotective or controlling mother who consequently traps a child. The feminine ribbon around the cages is fragile and unravels in places, but, Chow said, “Beauty isn’t necessarily about perfection.”

The aisle of chambers leads to a wall sculpture called “Keeper,” a ring with many keys on it. The various metals are arranged meticulously, forming a pattern of color and size that looks like sunrays. Chow, a self-proclaimed “passionate collector of objects,” said she’s interested in the way people keep keys even after they no longer know what the keys unlock. She also lined up many small, gold keys on another wall in “To Never Sleep Again.” These keys, which cast shadows, might belong to a child’s diary or treasure chest.

Chow used brass rings, plastic washers and mini-blinds to create extravagant, but elegant dresses for “All Tomorrow’s Parties.” Though the dresses were carefully made, Chow wanted them to look carelessly hung. It suggests life and that the art has had a life itself. 

Chow received her bachelor’s degree in theater from Northwestern University, where she became interested in costume design. Her work has been exhibited extensively in New York City and other places. She has won several awards, including the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, which is given to emerging, innovative artists whose work shows great promise.

Though fun and flashy, the dresses in “All Tomorrow’s Partiers” are made similar to chain mail armor, a traditional tactic that Chow shares with Borgenicht. The ceramic artist uses medieval chain mail as inspiration, an idea she thought would be “the most absurd thing to translate into clay.” However, it works well and has become her distinctive style. She appreciates the irony in the appearance. “If you drop them, they’ll shatter,” she said. “But there’s a sense about them that they’re quite strong and maybe protective in nature.”

Borgenicht prefers clay for responsiveness, the way it leaves a record of who has handled it. She joins rings of clay when they are still warm, leaving small seams. Some are hung on the wall in squares, like landscape paintings with the colored rings forming a scene abstractly. The rings are made of colored clay, not glazed, and color often seems to fade to white, like in ombre textiles. 

Other ceramics are architectural and box-like, trees spilling over or figurative. The most fitting of the shaped sculptures is “Torso II.” With just the slightest curves, it suggests a body that is covered in armor of blue and white and a hint of pink. Borgenicht’s work has been displayed in galleries throughout the United States and Italy.

Galazzi’s encaustic paintings include the remnants of so-called women’s domestic work, like buttons and sewing needles, and they honor the women who left them behind. She has preserved in wax the dainty handkerchiefs and lace doilies of her grandmother’s linen closet and others. She creates contemporary collages using a 3,000-year-old process with results that outlast life. The yellow wax and orange pigment give the work a bland Muenster cheese coloring, but it works as a collection of faded memories.

The textures caused by the underlying textiles are captivating. Galazzi said the process is meditative and repetitive. She adds layers of wax and it gathers on the material like snow on a tree. Despite the emotional ties she may have to the materials, she said she has to let the unpredictable wax have its way. “I can’t be too precise about it because it has a life of its own,” she said. She added that she has come to appreciate the “happy accidents” in her work.

Seeking to be both an artist and have a family, Galazzi initially used her ironing board as her easel. How fitting. Her works have now been displayed throughout New England for more than 20 years.

For more information, call 603-777-3461. The Lamont Gallery is in the Frederick R. Mayer Art Center on Tan Lane in Exeter. The exhibit is free and open to the public.