Delicate Clay Works by Paige Farrell and Paintings of Glass Vessels by Erin Luman

Erin Luman speaks about the origin of the glass vessel paintings:

In 2013, we hired an excavator to have some work done in our yard.  As the metal bucket sank into the dirt, the driver of the machine said he heard the strangest crunching sound and when he climbed out to look closer he saw a cross section of antique plates. From there he dug more carefully and bottle after bottle started to appear out of the mud.  As a collector and preserver, I cleaned and kept as many as I could. I also tied a bright thread to the top of each so I knew specifically which ones came from the people who lived in my house hundreds of years ago. For some reason, it felt important to know. Now here they are, unearthed from the dirt where they sat for hundreds of years, to portraits hung in an art gallery, paired alongside Paige Farrell’s beautiful clay vessels—her main material, earth itself. 

and Paige Farrell writes about process and collaboration:

These small works embody a quiet simplicity. They allow me to work in a deeply introspective space with but the simple element of clay, a mineral rich erosion of the earth’s crust over thousands of years. As I work in the studio, I imagine the clay I have beneath my hands could have come from the soil and sediment found at the edges of the Cape Ann quarries. Working with it connects me to a place of home; and the process of throwing and trimming on the wheel, hand building, and glazing is calming. Collaborating with Erin Luman has been a special delight. Her small paintings are portraits of found bottles pulled from the earth around her home; my small works were created from the earth as well. The dialogue between our two artistic mediums acknowledges gifts from the soil in this show we’ve titled ‘Unearthed.’