2010
“A Collaboration: Kaete Brittin Shaw and Hardie Truesdale”
Seeking a new challenge several years ago, artists Kaete Brittin Shaw and Hardie Truesdale embarked on a project with no preconceived ideas, but deeply rooted in their shared appreciation of the natural world around them. They are both “solitary workers” in their respective mediums – Kaete a sculptor who works extensively with porcelain, and Hardie, a photographer who specializes on the natural world.
Hardie does freelance photography for Mohonk Preserve, The Nature Conservancy
among others, and his works have been used in calendars published by such renowned organizations as Brown Trout, Audubon, Sierra, and National Geographic. While photographer Ansel Adams had a great influence on Hardie, he also gets great inspiration from the works of writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau.
Kaete’s work has been covered extensively in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Sculpture Magazine, The Boston Globe, and American Craft, and several books, as well. She has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and in Seoul, Korea, as well. Her sculptures, are in many private and public collections. She may be best known for her highly artistic functional potter. Both artists clearly share a deep appreciation of nature and organic objects.
For this collaborative project, they worked independently, while connecting often with each other to share ideas, and offer each other “input” as their work evolved. Hardie integrated a selection of Kaete’s small scale porcelain sculptures into the landscapes he found on his solitary expeditions in nature and photographed them there. True to his vision of the natural world, the pieces blended so organically into their surroundings that Hardie felt as if he had come across them by chance.
The Transition from nature to studio was accomplished by printing an enlargement of the section of the photograph which focused on the sculpture onto canvas. The resulting photographs were subsequently exhibited with the actual sculptures beside them, and in some cases, mounted on the photographs themselves, bringing their ideas full circle.For their exhibition at the Gallery Link, we will view the photographs from the original project, and see several pieces of Kaete’s functional porcelain, as well.
“A Collaboration: Kaete Brittin Shaw and Hardie Truesdale” will be on display from August 4th through September 29, 2010. There will be an Artists’ Reception on Wednesday, August 25th, from 5-7pm. The public is most cordially invited to attend. The Gallery Link is located in Ellenville Public Library & Museum, 40 Center Street, Ellenville, NY 12428, and is open during regular library hours. For more information, please call (845)647-5530. You can also visit Kaete’s website at: www.kaetebrittinshaw.com, or even better, go to her High Falls Studio.