ROSALIND PACE: C O L L A G E S - RECEPTION FOR THE ARTIST: SUNDAY 5, JANUARY - 3-5PM
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ROSALIND PACE
C O L L A G E S
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WELLFLEET ADULT
COMMUNITY CENTER
GREAT POND GALLERY
715 OLD KING’S HIGHWAY 508 349-2800
CURATED BY ROBERT RINDLER
THROUGHOUT JANUARY, 2025
OPEN 8AM - 4PM WEEKDAYS
PLEASE DIRECT ALL INQUIRIES TO:
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RECEPTION FOR THE ARTIST:
SUNDAY 5, JANUARY. 3-5PM
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NOVEMBER SERIES WITH ORANGE, GREEN, AND GRAY
MIXED-MEDIA COLLAGE: 8.5” x 22”
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
The collages in this exhibit span five decades of linear time, but, as I view them together now, I see not a linear progression but a shared language of colors that declare themselves as structure. I build a collage with random papers- Color-Aid. hand=painted, mono-printed, black pastel paper, occasionally old wallpaper, old sandpaper, pieces of writing. Edges are cut or torn. I pick up a piece, then another piece, like play, move pieces around, take away, put back, until something starts to take shape, which means that the various pieces start talking together and making a kind of visual conversation.
Making collages for me is essentially play. I love the look and feel of paper, the beauty of a torn edge and the way scissors can meander like a stream finding its course. I paint large sheets of paper, then tear them into pieces, adding them to my pile of raw material. I never throw anything away. I pick out papers that my hand is drawn to and move them around on a flat surface. My eyes are open, my mind is shut. I have no conscious purpose other than to see what happens. I am alert to surprise, the happy accident, the recognition that something suddenly works.
Then, of course, there are the long hours of intense deliberation when I attempt to solve formal aesthetic problems. As Ben Shahn said, “Behind intuition is a whole lot of tuition.”
I like the juxtaposition of color, the sense of play between stability and motion, between coming together and flying apart. I like layering, concealing, revealing, and the sense of space and architecture. The calligraphic elements in my work are actual words and phrases which I have cut so they cannot be read. And in the black and white works I like the sense that somewhere the black areas could fit together, and the white, and the expressionistically painted areas, and that the words might reveal their meaning, but not yet, not yet. I like the tension that a desire for connection produces.
SMALL COLLAGE WITH PURPLES AND GREENS
MIXED-MEDIA COLLAGE: 6.5” X 11”
ARTIST’S BIO
Rosalind Pace is an award-winning artist and poet who has embraced both creative activities her whole life.
Pace came to Truro in 1973 to study at Castle Hill with Budd Hopkins, abstract expressionist technique, and then collage. This has been her only formal training, but it was transformational.
She returned each summer, began showing her work, teaching collage, teaching Image-Making,
and developing her aesthetic signature: solid color, free painterly areas, cut and torn edges, calligraphic elements often, spaces that open into other spaces, a play of rectangles.
Pace was born in Minneapolis; her early childhood was spent in Washington DC during World War II, where she remembers watching searchlights sweeping across the sky. She graduated from Brown University with a degree in American Literature, and received an MA from University of Michigan. She taught English in Afghanistan for two years, then had a long career as a poet-in-the schools, raised two sons, and moved to Truro in 1991. She was a member of the Group Gallery in Provincetown, worked at and then was director of the now-legendary Long-Point Gallery. Poiesis: Five Decades of Collage, a retrospective of Pace’s work, was curated by Grace Hopkins for the Provincetown Art Association and Museum in May-June, 2024.
Pace’s work is represented by the Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown.