Tabitha Vevers: The Art of Survival is currently on view at Clark Gallery thru October 30. Her intimate and mysterious works are iconic and devotional, with imagery that is often beautiful, sexually charged and provocative. Gold leaf, exquisite color, and meticulously rendered figures enhance the emotional intensity of the work.
Vevers jewel-like paintings are laced with references to Illuminated manuscripts, the 12th Century practice of painting shells, Kai-awase, Pre-Renaissance Italian paintings, Irish Folklore, and Miniatures, and are executed on a wide array of materials including ivorine, vellum, tin, and found clam, oyster or scallop shells. Her stunning narrative paintings of fantastic allegory and mythology explore themes surrounding women, sexuality, and complex social and political issues.
About her shell paintings the artist writes:
I have often chosen to paint on unusual materials if they resonate with the ideas I’m working on, but with the Shell Series it has been the other way around — the imagery seems to grow out of the medium itself. Walking the beach to collect the shells and often finding them along that delicate line where sand meets the sea inspired imagined encounters between humans and the wild & mysterious creatures of the deep. Although the contours of sea clams shells seem to provide a perfect alcove for these gilded paintings, I have also worked on giant clam, scallop, quahog, mussel, and oyster shells.
Vevers work has been featured in exhibitions at Yale University, Provincetown Art Association & Museum, Boston Center for the Arts, and in galleries in New York, Philadelphia, California, Germany, and Ireland. A graduate of Yale University and student at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Ms Vevers has received many fellowships including grants from the George & Helen Segal Foundation, University of Rhode Island, and Fine Arts Work Center.
Clark Gallery
145 Lincoln Road
Lincoln, MA 01773
Tel: 781-259-8303
Barbecued Oysters in Their Shells
from Chris Schlesinger’s License to Grill
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 tablespoon minced garlic
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup Tabasco sauce
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
salt and freshly cracked black pepper to taste
4 dozen oysters of your choice, washed well
1/4 roughly chopped fresh parsley
Build a medium-hot fire in the grill.
In a shallow baking pan, combine the butter and garlic and place at the edge of the fire to melt the butter. When the butter has melted, add the lemon juice, Tabasco, Worcestershire, and salt and pepper to taste and stir everything together.
Place the oysters on the grill, directly over the fire, and cook for 2-3 minutes. At this point you can pull them off and open them with an oyster knife, or you can leave the oysters on for another 2 minutes until they open themselves. Discard any that do not open.
Sprinkle the oysters with the parsley, douse with the butter sauce, and serve in their shells, with the lemon quarters for spritzing.
