The Jane Deering Gallery in Gloucester Saturday held an opening reception for its latest show, “Unearthed,” featuring the complementary works by Paige Farrrell and Erin Luman.
Erin Luman’s paintings depicting vintage glass vessels were inspired by a 2013 excavation in her yard that, literally unearthed a cross-section of antique plates.
From there, a series of bottle after bottle started to appear out of the mud. Luman cleaned and kept as many as she could, carefully identifying which ones came from the home’s previous inhabitants long ago. They inspired her to complete the series of paintings.
Complementing the paintings is a series of diminutive ceramic handmade vessels by artist Paige Farrell. She said the series allowed her to work “in a deeply introspective space with but the simple element of clay, a mineral-rich erosion of the earth’s crust over thousands of years. As I work in the studio, I imagine the clay I have beneath my hands could have come from the soil and sediment found at the edges of the Cape Ann quarries.”
“Unearthed,” runs now through the end of April.
