Artist provides sights, sounds in Wadsworth exhibit

For nearly 50 years, the Wadsworth Atheneum’s MATRIX gallery has been a place where contemporary artists can go the extra distance to make sure their art has a special impact in an unusually supportive environment.

At the gallery, which has been part of the Wadsworth for nearly 50 years, work that might be displayed in a traditional fashion elsewhere can be expanded into installations augmented with soundscapes or other effects. Among the artists who’ve tested its boundaries are Nancy Spero, Barbara Kruger, Gerhard Richter and Carrie Mae Weems.

Lisa Alvarado, the featured MATRIX artist through Sept. 3, has chosen not to use the walls of that space at all. Her work includes free-hanging acrylic canvases framed with fringe, lace or fabric. She’s using areas of the floor to offset the suspended artworks with grounded sand sculptures which she is creating especially for this exhibit. Some of the work is brightly colored. Some are black and white. The artist’s intention is to feel “the patterns jumping off into the architecture of the space.”

Alvarado is also a musician who plays harmonium with the band Natural Information Society, whose other key member is her husband Joshua Abrams. Natural Information Society has recorded a unique “site-specific sound piece” for the MATRIX exhibit.

“It’s a four-channel piece that alternates around the installation,” the artist explained, using the phrase “vibration equations” to describe the relationship between the visuals and the sounds.

On Saturday, Alvarado will perform with Natural Information Society at 3 p.m. in the Wadsworth auditorium one floor below the MATRIX space. The group, which plays its own distinctive style incorporating elements of jazz, ambient music, minimalism and a lot of rhythm, will do two long compositions.

The relation between her art and her music is deeply felt. “How it connects to the music is what we want to get across,” she said.

Alvarado has been combining music with her art for over a decade. The music comes into the galleries, and her artworks are part of Natural Information Society concerts.

“It just came together,” she said. “On our first tour, we brought a painting with us. Music is always bleeding into my world. It’s not a planned thing.”

Her paintings are imbued with meanings and traditions drawn from Mesoamerican weaving and non-western traditions of abstraction. Displaying visual art in concert embeds new meaning in the work.

“It’s a way of bridging the past and present in a visual form,” Alvarado said. “It’s a way to blend painting and textile traditions.”

Lisa Alvarado’s “Spinning Echo” installation is on view through Sept. 3 in the MATRIX gallery at Wadsworth Atheneum, 600 Main St., Hartford. The band Natural Information Society is performing Saturday at 3 p.m. in the museum auditorium. Admission to the concert is $15 ($10 for college students) and is separate from museum admission, which is $15, $12 seniors and $5 students and free for children and Hartford residents. thewadsworth. org.