Subterraneous Sheltering

This month, the Harrison Center's Speck Gallery is exhibiting Subterraneous Sheltering by Fredricka Joyner, a series of abstract, geologically inspired landscapes rich with artistic and metaphorical depth. 

The motif of geology is prominent in Joyner's work: many of her pieces portray layers of rich sediment or striations from geologic eras, which invoke an intriguing, rocky underworld. The mixed media pieces in this show combine painted elements and collage materials, all carefully chosen for unique color, texture, and pattern. Fragments of fashion magazines and street maps form rocky outcrops, along with manipulated photographs and other ephemera with personal significance to the artist, like tea bags and Italian pastry bags. These elements combine to create colorful, collaged landscapes with a layered depth that is not understood at first glance. 

These geologic landscapes portray, in the artist's words, "a chaotic underworld that holds the possibilities for creative new life to emerge." Joyner sees these works as metaphors for the intense, multi-faceted isolation she observes in society today. For her, they picture the inability to connect across the deep divide of social and political polarization and the "ever-present peril of the climate crisis." Multiple pieces feature the outlines of indistinct figures against empty swathes of color, further highlighting the theme of isolation. The artist describes these figures as "ungrounded, waiting for the burrowing compost to nourish a new world."

To create these works, Joyner salvaged page fragments from magazine images advertising out-of-reach fantasy worlds, choosing the hopeful bits to collage together and paint over to form the base of each mixed media painting. She has created stunning underground scenes where beauty and pain, hope and despair are intermingled–and where, out of darkness, there is potential for new creative life to bloom. 

The show can be viewed anytime in the Harrison Gallery through the month of January: Monday – Friday from 9 a.m. - 5 p.m. The works can also be viewed and purchased on our online gallery through January.