The BankRI Turks Head Gallery Presents
“Paper Landscapes by Wendy Ingram”
May 4 through May 31, 2017 at the BankRI Turks Head branch in downtown Providence at One Turks Head Place.
There will be a Gallery Night reception on May 18 from 5 to 8:30 pm with guitar music by Mark Armstrong and light refreshments.
Exhibit hours are Monday through Wednesday 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Thursday and Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.
For more information, contact www.bankri.com or call 401 574-1330.
MEET THE ARTIST – WENDY INGRAM
“It’s been a wandering path,” says Providence artist Wendy Ingram. “And everyone who wanders,” she adds with a polite show of spirit, “isn’t necessarily lost.”
Ingram’s wandering started in Lynn, Massachusetts and then crisscrossed the country from Providence to San Francisco to Boston back to Providence again. That same path includes a 50-year plus friendship with her college roommate, two marriages, two daughters, two degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design, a career as a textile conservator and a bed and breakfast. Along the way Ingram has tried her hand at sculpture, paper making, collage, clay, tapestry, pastels and painting.
For a quiet, unpretentious and petite woman in her seventies, Ingram is never still. She is a familiar figure at gallery openings, dressed in rich colors and a sequined-studded baseball cap in either magenta or turquoise. She is a member of the Providence Art Club and helps out on the installation committee. Ingram enjoys taking art classes and learning new techniques. Six years ago, she picked up a paint brush for the first time and started painting.
Yet most in town know her for efforts to run and promote the Art Connection. The non-profit arts organization pairs other non-profits with artists and their works, installing art in places that normally would not have a budget for anything but the basics.
The original Art Connection is based in Boston and was the brainchild of a friend of Ingram’s, Fay Chandler. Both Ingram and Chandler had a studio in the Boston Center for the Arts. Despite their age differences, they became friends. Chandler was an older artist who worried about what might happen to her artwork when she was no longer around. She had a large exhibit and on the closing days of the show, invited area non-profits to come and take a piece for free. The idea behind the Art Connection was born. Today there are several Art Connections all over the country.
Ingram is exhibiting her nature-based paper collages at the BankRI Galleries. Using handmade paper, Ingram creates abstracted scenes in nature – canyons, mountains, rocks and waterfalls. A palette of blues, greens and greys dominate. There’s a pure simplicity to these collages that’s refreshing. Using only texture, shapes and subtle shifts of color, Ingram takes a perfect gem of an idea and makes it reality.
“I’m not good at making statements about my art,” Ingram says. “I just like to do it.”
The BankRI Galleries are curated by Paula Martiesian, a Providence-based artist and arts advocate.
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Gallery Night Providence 