“Saco Bog” is on display at the Front Room Gallery in South Portland, and features Karen Gelardi’s patterned explorations of nature, paper, and fabric. The drawings are composed of expressively rendered geometric patterns that seem to build on one another by virtue of a hidden tensile strength. With colored collage components and unabashed use of packing tape to paste these elements together, the optical nature of the work raises questions about seeing the forest for the trees. The Phoenix searched her out to ask about leaves, trunks, and juxtaposition.
What are you addressing with “Saco Bog”?
The way I’ve approached my recent work is to try and find out what underlying nature something has partly by how it responds to damage or being cut or rearranged, trying to build a resilient system into the work. The drawings that are in the show come from smaller drawings that have been set up to repeat and connect with one another. It produces its own life force that expands and fills up the space but can also take additions and subtractions.
How did this thread of interest begin?
When I first moved to the studio here [in South Portland], I was looking to set up a more disciplined studio practice. I began honing my drawing skills by doing studies of pine cones. I drew pine cones for two years in all different media. The nature studies I was most drawn to were the damaged trees, the ones that were cut near power lines. The structure of the tree itself, all this from a naive place concerning my connection to nature.
So you’re looking at these growth patterns from a purely visual standpoint?
Yes, but then you learn some basic things like how do you draw a tree? Where does the tree stop? How do the leaves connect? It informed my point of view quite a bit. It came down to these repeatable elements that form a whole. At this point I got more interested in creating components that can repeat, adapt, and expand.
So much of my work prior to this most recent work was about collage. How to reconcile random pieces and make something whole out of parts, more psychological. The nature studies tied into this and revealed secrets about repeating elements. You don’t see the interruptions. You see the connection more than the cut.
I have these colored paintings made for the purpose of collage. Gouache and watercolor. When I first started creating work with collage, I was tearing up magazines and books and then I realized I didn’t want it to be appropriated imagery. I want to keep stockpiling these resources to create more 2-D and 3-D collages. It takes time.
Will you talk about the history of your fabric work and how it is incorporated into the current show?
It came out of the same interest in this adaptable component-based system. I don’t know why I didn’t think about paper first; it ended up working better. I guess because I do repeating patterns at Angela Adams I was thinking about textile design. Also, my mother made silk screens all the time. This was part of a vocabulary with which I was familiar. These are echoes that keep cycling through the work and keep changing as they go through the process.
