Linda Ridgway
An Evening Line
Talley Dunn Gallery
This presentation of Linda Ridgway’s most recent works includes four bronze, wall-mounted sculptures and six works with graphite on paper that convey her appreciation of literature, poetry, and the beauty of the natural world with detailed line and delicate form. The sculptures have been cast in bronze using the direct burnout method, a technique that captures nearly every texture and structure of the plants’ fragile leaves and gnarled stems.
With many of these new works, I am searching for the essence of the singular through the simplicity of line.
Accompanied by text that has been stenciled directly onto the wall, sculptures such as Glory reveal the artist’s earnest regard of Shakespeare, as she represents his lines “Was never call’d to bear my part, Or show the glory of our art?” to celebrate the beauty of natural forms, the role of the artist, and the continued legacy of artmaking.
The role of memory and personal connection also play an important part in the exhibition. The ghost-like traces embodied in The Alice Chronicles #3 and Hester’s Letter speak of history, loss, and transformation, and as more than literal representations of everyday objects. The work which the exhibition is named after An evening line seeking its source speaks to the artist’s grandmother’s spirit. Ridgway describes the intimate and simultaneously universal feelings behind But let spotted leaves fall as they fall:
I was trying to get the sense of when things fall and when they fall over you. My mother didn’t like fall because she said it’s when things are dying. But I’ve always liked the sense of fall and renewal and things being reborn. Especially in times like these when we don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s something about nature that’s so necessary for our being. When I use things, they’re from my world.
Ridgway’s poetic images find a way to connect us with past and present experience, both the artist’s and perhaps even our own.