Sandi Haber Fifield and Frances Palmer: Earth/Clay

September 24 - December 3, 2011

Photography dealer Kathy McCarver Root and her gallery, KMR Arts, proudly announce the opening of a two person show of photographs by Sandi Haber Fifield and terra cotta sculpture by Frances Palmer entitled, "Sandi Haber Fifield and Frances Palmer: Earth/Clay." The opening is September 24 with an artist's reception from 2 to 5 pm and the exhibition continues through December 3, 2011. At the opening there will be a celebration of the fall harvest with Washington, Connecticut's own Waldingfield Farm. 

From June 2009 through the fall of 2010, Sandi Haber Fifield photographed family owned farms spanning New England to the West Coast and the Pacific Northwest, resulting in her most recent series of color photographs and monograph, Between Planting and Picking (Charta, 2011). Teeming with the lush colors and textures of these fertile fields, Haber Fifield made pictures that delicately balance the geographic with the geometric, while using the agricultural landscape to create a complex yet familiar vocabulary of visual associations. The images, highly considered in form, mimic the way we shape and structure the land. Between Planting and Picking is a journey, an exploration through the art of lingering, not moving on, consistently building on the artist's intricate and extensive photographic vocabulary. Sandi Haber Fifield's photographs have been included in exhibitions at The Art Institute of Chicago, The DeCordova Museum, The Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, The Oakland Museum, The Southeast Museum of Photography, and The St. Louis Art Museum.

Frances Palmer is a Connecticut based potter with an international following. Palmer's various creative influences include the turn-of-the-20th century Bloomsbury-based Omega Workshop, an artists' collective making useful objects in defiance of the Industrial Revolution, ancient Greek and Roman vessels, the simplicity of 19th century European creamware, and the dramatic sculptures of Diego Giacometti. The hand-thrown process leaves a good deal of the outcome to fate. Palmer revels in this serendipity, and is fond of saying that the clay "has as much to say about itself as I do." Palmer has created unique large scale terra cotta pieces specifically for this exhibition at KMR Arts which are functional as well as sculptural. 

Gallery owner Kathy McCarver Root says of this exhibition, "It is the first time I have combined two mediums for an exhibition at KMR Arts. It is exciting to me because there is a seamless dialogue between Frances Palmer's terra cotta pieces, which I consider to be functional sculpture and Sandi Haber Fifield's photographs, which are not stylized at all but thoughtfully composed."