The mission of the William H. and Sonja Carlson Davidow '56 Fine Art Gallery is to provide quality exhibitions and educational experiences for students and the greater community that deepen understanding of art, strengthen critical thinking, and broaden life experiences.

Our exhibitions highlight the creative spirit while raising awareness of the arts and the role of visual literacy and culture in a liberal arts environment. All of us at Colby-Sawyer want the visual arts to flourish and believe that the arts enrich our lives and serve as testimony to the beliefs and values of our culture, the world and the mysteries of the unknown.

Katherine Gardener: REBIRTH

July 7, 2021 – Nov. 1, 2021 M-F, 10 am – 5 pm

REBIRTH celebrates a return to normal and once again finding our voices as artists. We have emerged into a post pandemic world that has changed us. We are reborn and awakened to a new sense of being which demands new ways of living. At the same time, we delight as echoes of the past return.

This work was created just before the Covid isolation. As I prepared it for presentation, I found that I was seeing it differently through this new post-pandemic lens. It is our job as artists to see what others do not “to document without words”. The journey of life gives us the freedom to create works that can mean different things at different times. I seek to create unique visual works that expand the viewer’s imagination. I am hopeful that viewing this art as a community will unite and inspire us as we individually embrace our new normal.

My work enlists nature, light, movement, and layering of color and material through a physical process of abstract collage. By isolating and repeating shapes to create new sequences and rhythms, I reveal a relationship to my daily environment. The content is the visual mosaic of my life which is both rural and urban. People, animals, landscapes, relationships, and objects fuse together in these works of patterns, motion, and routine. My studio is a space to unload my ideas. The process of making is immediate and commemorative.

I am a young visual artist based out of Boston’s Humphreys Street Studios, located in Dorchester, MA. My time at Colby-Sawyer was instrumental in preparing me to become the artist I am today. I received my BFA in Painting in 2015. While attending Colby-Sawyer, I was a recipient of the Joann Franke Overfield scholarship and the Colby-Sawyer Baccalaureate Award for the BFA in Studio Art. I then attended a two-year post-baccalaureate Fine Arts program at Brandeis University, followed by graduate school. In 2019 ,I received my MFA in Painting at Boston University.

Portfolio available at katherinegardener.com