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Past Show • February 7 - March 2, 2019

Marianne Connolly
There and Back Again: Collages 1998-2019

Opening / Amherst Arts Night Plus: First Thursday, February 7, 5-8 pm
Forum / Artists In Community: Third Thursday, February 21, 7:30 pm
The Studio of Little Lu – reading and conversation with the artist
Free and open to the public.

The Forum, Artists In Community, is supported in part by a grant from the Amherst Cultural Council, 
a local agency, supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.   
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​Lu’s Long Journey, collage, 2018, Marianne Connolly

In There and Back Again, Amherst artist Marianne Connolly exhibits collage work rich in elements of narrative and storytelling, selected from the past twenty years. Earlier works, from her Brides series, often feature figures from mythology or literature, such as the ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor dancing on the moon, or Ophelia (from Shakespeare’s tragedy of Hamlet) decked out in a diving helmet. Most of the more recent works derive from Connolly’s own fiction writing, including a work-in-progress about a young artist who creates a character called Little Lu. “I have a deep and long-abiding love of mythology, fantasy, and literature,” the artist explains. “While most of my photography is abstract, or about moments in time, my collages are mostly about stories of goddesses, heroes, or a little girl named Lu.”

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 Hathor Dancing on the Moon, collage, 1998, Marianne Connolly

Working in collage, Connolly combines paper images from art history, medical, and science books with mass-market advertising and publications. Much of her source material, she notes, is culled from free exchange at libraries and transfer stations in Amherst and Wendell. All the images are manually cut and pasted, without computer adjustment or manipulation. Mostly page-size, the pieces are intimate works that invite being cradled in the hand and examined up close.