Visitors to the gallery in the Sarah Doyle Women's Center will have one last chance to catch "Night Garden" by Boston-based artist Hilary Tolan this week. The exhibit, which closes Nov. 27, uses wax flowers and delicate paper to depict life's fragility.
Most of the works in the show employ floral themes in shades of gray, pink and green. "I've been working with the iconography of plants and flowers for a lot of years," said Tolan, who proposed the exhibit after seeing the gallery's call for work in the magazine Art New England.
The most striking works in the gallery are two series of wax-coated flowers, both natural and cloth. At first glance, the shiny material of "Beloved (Waxed Plants)" is difficult to identify, as are the figures, which look like hybrids between brains and sponges. Close up, though, traces of petals and stems are visible.
Similarly, "Beloved (Waxed Plants and Florals)," an arrangement of flowers and other plants displayed on three shelves of a china cabinet, features real, cloth and waxed flowers side by side, almost indistinguishable from one another.
"I've been interested in exploring the idea of time decay in my art," Tolan said.
Death is inevitable for all living creatures no matter how hard they try to avoid or postpone it. Preserving a flower's fragile petals in solid, unyielding wax "still doesn't stop time," she said.
Tolan said she also aims "to illuminate that fragility" with paper, which hangs loosely off the surface of her collages, creating a delicate third dimension.
Collages combining paper cutouts with pencil drawings of flowers, leaves and other plant parts line the walls of the gallery, whose interior architecture influenced Tolan's positioning of each piece.
The gallery is "an interesting space because, unlike most galleries, it's an old house," said Gallery Coordinator Brooke Hair '10, who helped set up "Night Garden."
Tolan said the fireplace in the gallery inspired her when she first visited the building. She placed "English Garden," a collage of black and white flowers and draping green leaves, above it, and arranged the rest of the artwork based on this starting point.
"What I like most about Hilary's work is that she pays close attention to the detail in her work, and she's very precise about how she uses her materials," Hair said.
Tolan said she hopes gallery visitors reflect on what they see, as the collection "requires people to slow down and take something in that's kind of subtle and doesn't hit you on the head."
