Folk Modern

Folk-Modern
October 17, 2015  – May 8, 2016

Anima Katz
Matt LaFleur
Jack Metzger
John McQueen
Nancy Natale
Giselle Potter
Steve Rein
Susanna Starr

Folk art reflects the creative traditions of a community or culture, and its practitioners strive to achieve the highest standards of their craft. Materials are often those most readily available, and images or patterns describe the activities, observations and cycles of daily life. Style and technique are often learned through apprenticeship or may be even entirely self-directed – consider Grandma Moses for example.

By contrast, beginning in the twentieth century, those identifying themselves as fine artists considered originality, and the expression of the individual to be the most important features of their work. Many sought the rigors of formal academic training and a life of singular dedication to the studio.

While distinctions such as these have long been drawn between folk and fine art, the wall between them has been crumbling for some time, and inhabitants of both sides have been finding much common ground. This exhibition brings together individuals whose work occupies a territory in which qualities at once traditional and innovative, ancestral and personal are seen to coexist and thrive.

Photos by Arthur Evans