02/27/2025
It's my pleasure to invite you to my first opening reception since before the pandemic!
Saturday, April 8, 4-6pm
Mindy Ross Gallery, Kaplan Hall
SUNY Orange, Newburgh
Curiosity
An Exhibition by Mary Cathryn Roth
To remain curious throughout one’s life is, in and of itself, an art as well as a key to creative survival. Being Where Our Feet Are, residing in this present moment, remaining open to taking it all in, is exhilarating. This is what I have strived to impart to my students over my teaching years at SUNY Orange. It can be challenging through a pandemic, political turmoil and environmental upheaval. To teach is an attempt to be present with people, in their present moment, and to encourage and inspire them to move through life’s moments with grace, gratitude, understanding, compassion and curiosity. To assist in guiding a student’s vision, approach to the creative process, and to life, is an honor.
The first time I saw a Curiosity was on a mantle at Old Sturbridge Village (OSV). Sailors created them with shells from their travels during their time at sea. This creation sparked my already strong interest in the time period of whaling, sea captain’s wives, early global travel and exploration by sea. It was this first trip to OSV, over Thanksgiving weekend in 2014, that I met the women of The Historical Society of Early American Decoration (HSEAD) and my reverse glass painting mentor, Anne Dimock. I was currently a member of the Mid-Hudson Valley Chapter of the Embroiderer’s Guild of America (EGA). Being charmed by early School Girl Art, I quickly became intrigued with the methods and instruction of HSEAD, studied with Anne Dimock, and became a Guild Member of HSEAD in 2017 (Self-Portrait Series, Rockport, Maine).
It is a long-standing tradition in the arts to copy and learn from “the masters.” HSEAD encourages the precise observation and copying of historic originals. Copying the globes of The Westtown School with this precise methodology of observation of the historic original led to the creation of my Globe I: Envisioning a World With No Geo-Political Borders. I will be teaching handsewn globes this summer at The Nantucket Historical Association. While creating my first completely handsewn globe – I imagined a world with no countries or borders, where resources are shared and distributed evenly. I contemplated the fact that our Earth is 71% water. Therefore, I decided to select approximately 71% of the work in this exhibition to be images involving water.
The works in this exhibition include digital images taken during the pandemic of light reflected on water, and three paintings of these images. Along with digital images from three Walking Series themes. The Walking Series developed out of reading and reflecting on Rebecca Solnit’s Wanderlust: A History of Walking and A Field Guide to Getting Lost which emphasize the profound relationship between walking and thinking/meditation, walking and culture, and I have added to that walking with curiosity and artistic intention, creating photographs along the way.
I am very curious about how our relationship to imagery, photography and memory has changed during the past 25 years of this digital age. As it was in the 1880s during the Industrial Revolution, this rapid rate of change shifts our perceptions and how we exist in time and space and now digital space. To print a photograph or not to print? How do you create? What is a photograph? These are questions I enjoy exploring with the students of today. Keeping me curious, and sparking their curiosity.
This exhibition is dedicated to my children, my students and my dear friend, Frank Shuback whose artistic curiosity never waned.
