As Everywhere of Silver is part of the Southern Allegheny Museum of Art (Ligonier branch) 25 anniversary celebration. This two person show features the original artwork of Nicole Renee Ryan and Rita Haldeman.

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The title for the exhibit comes from the Emily Dickinson poem of the same name:

As Everywhere of Silver

With Ropes of Sand

To keep it from effacing

The Track called Land

 

Most analysis of the poem has to do with how the ocean is held back from taking over the land only by beaches. But to Rita and Nicole, it also seemed as if it had something with do with the changing of the season, the movement of the landscape over time, with only thin threads of similarity holding the landscape as being one place.  Nicole and Rita both like to work with the changing of time, weather, and season in a landscape though in different ways. 

 

Rita and Nicole are both landscape artists, but who work with very different processes. Rita gathers inspiration from her travels as well as from more local and seemingly mundane scenes. She waits for a moment of change, when the light shimmers and reflects colors in new ways. Her work captures the beauty that is often taken for granted. Nicole is also concerned with beauty, but not of a real sort. She wants her landscapes to sing and play as if they were their own moving subject. Nicole doesn't work with references and instead, likes to rely on her memory and imagination, she likes to see how memory and imagination mix and mingle to make a new place that only feels real. 

 

As Everywhere of Silver coincides with the 25th anniversary of SAMA Ligonier. Silver is a color both Rita and Nicole used to symbolize this occasion. Look for it in various works in the exhibit and see if you can spot the silver and grey used throughout. 

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