The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Solo exhibits featured at Five Points Gallery
TORRINGTON — Five Points Gallery, located at 33 Main St. in downtown Torrington, will open three new solo shows that will run from Thursday through Dec. 2. The exhibitions feature the work of three Connecticut artists, Janet Lage, Sarah Paolucci and Gil Scullion. Altek Electronics Inc. sponsors the three exhibitions.
Lage’s show, entitled “MUCK — xo,” will be featured in the Five Points West Gallery.
In writing about her paintings, Lage says, “I weave a story of personal, intimate experiences. Rather than telling a complete story, I leave room for the viewer to form his or her own narrative.”
Working with oils, ink and graphite in her studios in Old Lyme and in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, Lage incorporates images with lines and words to create bright, abstract stories on canvas. The recipient of numerous awards, she was selected as the winner of a solo exhibition in Five Points Gallery at the New Britain Museum of American Art’s 2016 Annual Nor’Easter juried exhibition. She has had numerous solo shows including Amy Simon Fine Art gallery in Westport, the EBK Gallery in Hartford, and the William-Scott Gallery in Provincetown, Mass. In 2010, she was awarded a Connecticut Artist Fellowship for painting.
Paolucci is a figurative painter whose show, “Hands of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra,” will be on display in the Five Points TDP Gallery. In preparation for her “Hands” series, she attended several HSO rehearsals to observe up close the dexterity of the musicians’ fingers.
“Focusing solely on the hands brings attention to personal preferences; how they hold their instrument, the callus they have on a finger, how they hold their pinky on that one note,” the painter said in a written statement.
If the orchestra is the result of many hands working independently to create a whole, her finely rendered oil paintings offer an intimate look at the individuals who make up that whole. She has exhibited in juried and group shows including Artspace in Hartford, the Mattatuck Museum and the New Britain Museum. Paolucci earned a BFA in illustration (Magna Cum Laude) from the University of Hartford, Hartford Art School, and is an adjunct professor there while working on her MFA.
The Five Points East Gallery will showcase Gil Scullion’s “Empty Spaces/Fear Nothing.”
The show features unoccupied rooms whose furnishings only hint at human presence. Scullion suggests that the scale of the images and objects in these virtual stage sets — they remind him of the facades of buildings in old Hollywood westerns — invites viewers “to project themselves into the settings, to provide the narrative.”
For his current project, the artist points out that none the materials he uses is archival: In sculpture, he works with cardboard; for paint, he chooses commercial acrylic house paint. “The paintings themselves are produced through the use of stencils, which challenges the conventional notion of the original,” he says. “They are an absence masquerading as a presence — which is the central preoccupation of my work.”
Scullion has exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the United States.
Five Points Gallery will hold two events in conjunction with the exhibition. An opening reception will be held on Friday, 6 to 8:30 p.m.; and an artists’ panel discussion will take place in the gallery at 6 p.m. on Nov. 17. Gallery hours are Thursdays through Mondays, 1-5 p.m., and by appointment. There is no admission charge. Five Points exhibitions and educational events are free and open to the public.
For more information about the gallery, visit www.fivepointsgallery.org.