The color and shape of sound on view at Imago Gallery through Oct. 4

Imago Foundation for the Arts Exhibiting Artist David Clarke remembers when his house would shake with the vibration and sound of passing freight cars from the nearby railroad yard. Today, he has taken that memory to explore the theme of sound and color to inspire a sculpture of the Fender guitar, “the engine of sound that my generation grew up with,” he says.

This featured artwork is on view as part of a new group exhibition at Imago Gallery, 36 Market Street, Warren Aug. 28-Oct. 4.

Imago Foundation for the Arts (IFA) will host a free, public reception for the artists from 5 to 8 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 13, with music accompaniment by Joe Parillo. Clarke’s artworks will be shown with artwork by IFA Spotlight Artist Duff Schweninger and guest artist Eli Portman, as well as other IFA exhibiting and craft artists.

In addition to the guitar sculpture, Clarke is presenting a series of abstract oil paintings built on a simplification of lines, shapes, and marks based in part on Alber’s color theory and Mondrian’s thin color line idea, which has allowed him to concentrate on composition and color. “I am using these basic tools to create a weightless, pulsing, electric space from which new ideas emerge,” he says. “This energy is either contained or released in contrasting, or similar, color combinations on the frames.”

Schweninger, IFA’s Spotlight Artist, has been making paintings for the past five years since moving back to Rhode Island from New York City in 2017. His latest works employ mostly color and lines as compositional elements. They are reductive works in which their parts are simplistic and direct, standing for themselves, with their perceived inherent qualities and relationship to each other. “I tried to employ a somewhat random working process, while suppressing my personal aesthetic preferences, allowing them to “build themselves” as much as possible,” he explains.

Guest artist Eli Portman is fascinated with the concept of perception. He says, “Many experiences in my life have made me feel quite alone. In those moments, I feel unique in the way that I perceive things. And yet at the same time, I strongly believe that we as human beings share many experiences, many thoughts, feelings, and reactions.”

His artwork features fine detail and richly layered color that he uses to depict the moments of 'unique' isolation that we all share, such as the feeling of walking alone while viewing social excitement through nighttime windows or working while others play to their contentment. A Boston native, Portman has created murals and custom artwork for companies as diverse as Starbucks, Walmart and General Electric. In 2024, he worked with the "Auschwitz Exhibit," a traveling holocaust museum, to create the largest watercolor painting in the world.

Other IFA exhibiting artists participating in this exhibition include Dot Bergen, Jim Cain, Bill Chisholm, Stephen Fisher, Philip Gruppuso, Gary Heise, Carl Keitner, Lisa Lowenstein, Eileen Mayhew, Linda Megathlin, Mercedes Nuñez, Anne Marie Rossi and Pat Warwick, plus IFA Emerging Artists Eliza Goodwin and Crickett Fisher.

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