10/17/2025
The Furlong Gallery will hold a closing reception next Thursday, Oct 23, from 4-6pm. Both artists will be present.
Exhibitions on View:
NORTH GALLERY
becoming I, I say You (for Martin Buber)
By Charles Matson Lume
Lume Sabbatical Artist Talk:
Room 201 | Wednesday, October 22 | 6:00 PM
Charles Matson Lume is a visual artist who believes we need beauty every day. This truth was made more real in the pandemic. Beauty emits the immortal scent and sensual manifestation of justice, which is often slow to become present amongst us. When beauty visits, we sense justice might be near.
His art traces the contours of "art is a verb, not a noun" and "the loveliest sounds arise out the deepest silences". He sees light as quicksilver. It’s slippery, ephemeral, and mostly unmanageable. His ephemeral light installations reveal instances when light and materials radiate in a kind of hallucinatory pas du deux.
Matson Lume has been awarded artist fellowships and grants from: Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2025), McKnight Foundation (2025), Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation (2022), Bush Foundation (2003), Jerome Foundation (2002), and nine Minnesota State Arts Board. He has had over fifty solo exhibitions and participated in over one hundred group exhibitions both internationally and nationally at institutions such as: Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; The Cello Factory, London, England; Akureyri Art Center, Akureyri, Iceland; Babel Kunst, Trondheim, Norway; Kemijävi Art Gallery, Kemijävi, Finland; and Hunter College/Time Square Gallery, New York, NY. He has participated in over fifteen artist residencies in locations such as: Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, and the US. Charles’s art has been featured in: The Irish Times, BeautifulDecay.com, Hyperallergic.com, ART PAPERS, Art Notes: International Art Magazine, and National Public Radio. His art has been curated into artist registries at White Columns, The Drawing Center, and ISE Cultural Foundation, all located in New York, NY. He lives with his family in St. Paul, MN.
More information can be found here:
https://registry.whitecolumns.org/view_artist.php?artist=11863
SOUTH GALLERY
Didn’t I Used to Have a Sense of Humor?
By Hannah Niswonger
Niswonger SOAD Speaker Series Artist Talk
Room 321 | Thursday, October 23 | 6:00 PM
This exhibition brings together four installations: Octopus’s Garden; Cloud—Bird—Place; Poisonous & Carnivorous Dinnerware; and Conversations with My Father’s Paintings. Each is an exploration of complexities of life ranging from personal to global in scale. I use humor to process difficult issues: climate change, loss of habitat, threats to bodily autonomy, the death of my parents.
“Didn’t I used to have a sense of humor?” These were the last words my mother said to me before she died this April, when she was struggling to retain her identity while losing her battle with age and disease. For me, these words reflect the human talent, and sometimes desperate need, to use humor to cope with tribulation and loss. The works in this exhibition translate humor and grief into social commentary.
Hannah holds an MFA in ceramic sculpture from Alfred University and a BA from Wesleyan University. She has taught ceramics at numerous colleges, including MassArt and Harvard University. Her recent work builds on a lifelong passion for the natural world, incorporating careful studies of flora and fauna into pottery and sculpture. She has over three decades of experience exhibiting nationally in galleries and juried craft shows, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art Show, Smithsonian Craft Show and CraftBoston, where she received the Award of Distinction. Her work is held in permanent collections including at the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts and the Alfred Museum of Ceramic Art. She is co-founder and co-director of Pots On Wheels, POW!, a community engaged craft project. She lives in Melrose, Massachusetts with her family and two bad rabbits
More information can be found here:
https://www.hnclay.com
