July 5 – September 20, 2020
Warner Gallery
Reception: Friday, July 3 | 5:00 – 8:00 p.m.
The South Bend Museum of Art is proud to present, Lea Goldman and Sarah Martin: Intertwined, the fourth in the SBMA’s Conversations series of exhibitions.
Without stories, we can’t know what it’s like to be someone else — to find what hopes, dreams, or fears we might share. Listening and hearing another’s stories, is to start to know that person. Stories unite us.
Artists Lea Goldman (South Bend, IN) and Sarah Martin (Murray, KY) are storytellers. Sarah Martin’s sculptural furniture and cabinets have doors and compartments that reveal exquisitely rich interiors when opened. Each view is a moment of a larger narrative. For Martin, these narrative fragments add up to a self portrait, experienced cumulatively as each artwork unfolds an inner world. Similarly, Lea Goldman views her paintings and prints as “events.” She states, “whatever happened before or will happen after is left for the interpretation of my viewers.” While not directly connected, these events are story fragments expressed through a personal mythology that Goldman has developed as boundaries between legends, supernatural occurrences, prayers and folk tales dissolve and bleed into the “real” world of her everyday experience.
As visitors move through the exhibition, they will experience the conversation created as these stories are told. Likely to be found are moments of commonality — and connection — within the experience of these intertwining tales.
Lea Goldman was born in Romania and raised in Russia and the Middle East. She immigrated to the U.S. in 1975, and resided in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago. She currently lives and works in South Bend, IN. Goldman earned a Master of Arts in Art and Education from Columbia University Teachers College, NYC, and an M.F.A. in Studio Arts from California State University, Los Angeles. Narrative in nature, her interest in multi-cultural traditions, legends, and folklore has evolved into a constantly developing personal mythology that is expressed within her award-winning paintings and prints. Her work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions throughout the country, and has been published in a variety of newspapers and magazines, including the George Washington University Literary Review, In Michiana,Chicago BAC Journal, The Elkhart Truth, and Indigo 2009 Anthology, to name a few.
Sarah Martin is an assistant professor of art in woodworking at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky. She first discovered her love of woodworking in 1998 when she was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and went on to receive her M.F.A. in Woodworking from the Program in Artisanry at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth in 2005. Martin specializes in woodworking, small metals, and sculpture and has been included in exhibits throughout the United States and abroad. She has participated in residencies at the Penland School of Craft and San Diego State University, and regularly teaches workshops at craft schools around the country.
The Conversations series of exhibitions pairs a regional established artist with an established artist from outside of the South Bend community. It sparks discussion between the work of the two artists – examining parallels and dissonances, and provides an opportunity to exhibit some of the strongest artists working today, in the region and nation. Taking full advantage of the expansive Warner Gallery, Conversations also encourages artists to show larger, more ambitious work than might be possible in smaller gallery spaces.
Images:
(left) Sarah Martin, Lost and Found, 2008, Soft maple, basswood, vintage kimono fabric, copper, ink, 22 x 16 ½ x 8 ¾ inches
(right) Lea Goldman, Wind, 2015, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches
Sponsored in part by The Inn At Saint Mary’s. Providing artist accommodations for our 2020 season of exhibitions.
