place
Speedwell Contemporary
630 Forest Ave,
Portland, ME 04101
opening
29 February
5:00p – 8:00p
w/ light refreshments
closing
16 March
3:00p – 6:00p
w/ poetry reading
date/time
Thurs. – Sat.
12:00p – 6:00p
ARTISTS | Kristen Case, Peah Pauline Guilmoth, Paloma Kop, Emily Nelligan
Peah Pauline Guilmoth
(b. 1993)
A glamor surrounds the dark grayscale skies, spiderwebs, and plunging falls in Guilmoth’s photography. At first, the film aberrations and light halos in her images win our trust like spirit and fairy photography of the 19th century once could, but traces of manipulation hang like a thread to pull. This evidence of the human hand warms Guilmoth’s paranormal subjects and leads to the question: who among us sees the spiderweb and specter with such affection?
Kristen Case
(b. 1976)
Case’s poems feel like walking in deep snow. Deft enjambments and rich imagery catch and drop us in a lopsided rhythm, demanding the type of attention reserved for watching a play in middle English or deciphering prophecy as it spills forth. She roots us in historical reference and modern identity, then beckons us outside before dawn, waking us in the raw present with the cold lingering on our pajamas and the separations between us, the world, and sensation erased.
Paloma Kop
(b. 1991)
Exposing the unseen like a mad wizard-scientist, Kop is grounded in methods of tech, magnets, and sound. She manipulates the inanimate—glass, water, liquid metal, radio waves, and light itself— and communicates with the spirits possessing it. These beings dance and speak in whirling, gelatinous shape, and bubbling drone, and we wonder whether their intelligence is inherent, an artist's trick, or a projection of the mind. Kop unveils the self-organizing properties of our world and we are faced with their mysterious autonomy.
Emily Nelligan
(1924-2018)
Nelligan’s subtle and masterful charcoal drawings capture dynamic atmospheres that seem to only still under our gaze, returning to motion when we look away. Their lush precision attests to a depth of familiarity with her medium and subject that could only have been built over a lifetime. Phantasmic lights bloom out of vast darkness, illuminating the familiar textures of Maine islandscape and dissolving back into velvet abstraction.
Artist captures written by Thea Hart
