Join us for an Art Reception featuring works by local artist, Daniele Frazier. Complimentary snacks and wine will be provided.

From the Artist: I will be showing 5 large works on paper as well as 7 photograms (camera-less photography). This is an excerpt of a body of work that has been a year in-the-making and culminated during my recent tenure as an Open Studio Resident at the Haystack Mountain School of Craft in Deer Isle, Maine. The series ultimately materialized as a synthesis of what I was reading [The Science of Enlightenment: How Meditation Works by Shinzen Young], listening to [Leonard Cohen], and looking at [the architecture of Edward Larrabee Barnes] during my time in the studio. 

Buddhist mindfulness emphasizes present-moment awareness. In the song Anthem, Leonard Cohen (an ordained Buddhist monk) urged letting go of expectations and embracing simplicity with lyrics like "Forget your perfect offering." This focus on the present and the beauty of simplicity is also reflected in the philosophy of Haystack’s campus architecture designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes. A philosophy, facilitating the intersection of art, craft, and design, that aligns with the Bauhaus approach of merging creativity with functionality. This connection between mindfulness and artistic creation extends further to the Bauhaus movement, with its emphasis on rejecting unnecessary embellishment. László Moholy-Nagy, founding member of the Bauhaus and master of the photogram, often blurred the lines between art, industry, and the act of reproduction through printmaking or photography, echoing this focus on the present by capturing a specific moment in time–in the case of a photogram, a fraction of a second. By stripping away the nonessential, these elements—mindfulness, Cohen’s lyrics, Moholy-Nagy, Bauhaus principles, Edward Larrabee Barnes' architecture—all inspired me to achieve a similar kind of clarity and direct experience. Using broken glasses and flattened silverware, I recorded instances of incidental change and indelible shifts in form. I wonder if Cohen thought about photography when he wrote, “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”