2018 Studio Show & Sale

Saturday, Nov. 17, 10 – 4 • Sunday, Nov. 18, 1 – 4

Carol MacDonald’s Studio, 614 Macrae Road, Colchester, VT 05446

The birds have been actively engaging in constructive conversation and dialogue in my studio this fall. Come for a sneak preview of this new body of work and visit some of your old favorites. Monoprints, Limited Edition Prints, Cards and Sketchbooks will be for sale.  10% of sales will benefit Frog Hollow.

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Spiritual Threads

I am honored to install my work in the sanctuary of the Waterbury Congregational Church.

Art making is, for me, a form of spiritual practice. A way that I come into myself and make sense of the world and connect on a soul level to a greater purpose. So to have my work in this beautiful New England Meeting House brings the thread full circle! There are lovely stained glass windows whose designs play off the knitted stitches that I explore in my images.

I will speak tomorrow, March 30th at 10:00 during the service.

A reception will follow at 11:15 where I will speak again and be available for comments and questions. Please join us.

The work will be on display through April 30th.

The White Meeting House, 8 North Main St., Waterbury, VT.

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Two Threads

Sept. 5 – Oct. 26

Opening Reception

Thursday, Sept 5, 5-7 pm

Artist Talk at 6 pm

River Arts

74 Pleasant St. Morrisville, VT

http://www.riverartsvt.org

Gallery Hours M-F 10-2pm

for off hours call ahead 802-888-1261

Artists are often identified by the subject matter they work with. In this exhibition I am interested in creating a conversation between Knitting and Crows, two bodies of work I have been engaged and identified with over the past ten years. In this series of hand pulled monoprints, issues of community, life, transition, process and communication are explored. For many years, crows and birds brought threads to a communal nest and held the thread of conversation between themselves. Over the years the threads have become yarn, knitted and tangled, unraveled and reconstructed. Patterns and process are explored and enlarged as it relates to the rhythms and transitions of our daily lives. The birds continue to fly in and out bringing their voices to the conversation.

Carol E.S. MacDonald is an artist, and master printmaker living and working in Vermont. She attended the Maryland Institute College of Art and the Lake Placid School of Art. Recent solo exhibitions include: Line / Structure / Pattern, Washington Printmakers Gallery, Silver Springs, MD; The Thread: A 40 Year Retrospective, VCAM/RETN Art Space, Burlington, VT; Knit Monoprints, Galerie Maison Kasini, Montreal, Quebec; Cast On – Bind Off, Firehouse Gallery, Burlington, VT. She was a featured artist at Vogue Knitting: LIVE in New York City and Chicago. Her work was shown in Foot Print International at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, CT, Papier 12, Contemporary Art Fair in Montreal, Quebec and Parallax Art Fair in New York City and Miami.

MacDonald has been an artist fellow at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. She received the 2008 Barbara Smail Award from Burlington City Arts, an Artist Opportunity Grant from the Vermont Arts Council in 2007 and the Susan B. Anthony Award in 1999 from the YWCA for Leadership in the Arts. Her work is in many private and corporate collections. Including: Robert Hull Fleming Museum, Burlington, VT; Johnson & Johnson Corp, NJ; Champion Paper International, Stamford, CT; San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco, CA; Gelman Library, George Washington University, Washington DC; Shearson Lehman, American Express, NY, NY.

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Regeneration

Central Vermont Medical Center

130 Fisher Road, Berlin, VT

August 28 – Oct. 25, 2013

REGENERATION

– act of regenerating; state of being regenerated.

I am interested in the use of repetition and process in healing and nurturing our spirits. I notice in my life a yearning for space, both physical and mental and time to breathe, reflect and consider. I find that knitting forces me to slow down and allows me that soulful space of regeneration.

The abstract pattern that is created through knit is endlessly fascinating to me. Opening up the stitches to expose the twists and turns the yarn takes as it makes a fabric feels akin to exposing the great secrets of life. Knit pattern is created from a single strand, at times mistakes are made, the pattern unravels and becomes a tangled mess or can be reformed into a new pattern. These are all metaphors for our life and healing process. As I work with patterns, opening up parts, microcosms emerge. The structures become cellular or skeletal in nature or take on their own sculptural shapes.  Beauty in its most essential form.

In this work I often print from pieces that I have knit. I have also learned to draw and paint the process of knitting. By combining the techniques of monoprinting with drawing, the act of knitting becomes a way for me to explore issues of process, repetition, space and time. Printmaking is inherently a repetitious process involving the inking of plates, placing the inked plate on the press bed, placing the paper on the plate, covering with blankets and rolling the bed through the press. With monoprint, I build up layers of imagery by printing multiple times on the same paper. I often use the “ghost”, which is the ink left on the plate after printing, to create textures and veils. The transfer of imagery from plate to paper is challenging to control and requires a certain level of letting go for the imagery to emerge.

I hear the call to explore our inner riches and make time for our selves in this distracting, technological world.  My intention is that these images evoke the connection to soul that supports healing and regeneration.

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