Pelham Art Center Opens Map-Themed Exhibit Next Month

• Editor's Note: The following releases was submitted by the Pelham Art Center. If you would like to post your news to Patch,  for detailed instructions.

The Pelham Art Center will open its exhibit Anywhere But Here from 6:30 p.m to 8 p.m., Friday, Sept. 14, with a free reception and all-age art workshop.

For thousands of years, maps and map-making have inspired mankind to define, describe, and navigate its surroundings. The group exhibition Anywhere But Here will feature fifteen artists who explore concepts of maps and cartography in metaphoric, personal, and physical journeys through painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, photography, and video. On view fthrough Oct. 27, the exhibition is free and open to the public. For more information about Pelham Art Center, call 914 738 2525 or visit www.pelhamartcenter.org.

 “With Anywhere But Here, the curators have organized an exciting and relevant exhibition that is part of an international trend to showcase contemporary artists ‘under the influence’ of mapping,” Lynn Honeysett, Executive Director of Pelham Art Center, said of the upcoming exhibition.

 The title of the show takes its name from Mona Simpson’s 1986 prize-winning novel about the restless cross-country movement of Adele and Ann, a mother who is driven by images of a perfect life, and her wise and melancholic daughter.

“My mother and I should have both been girls who stayed out on the porch a little longer than the rest, girls who strained to hear the long-distance trucks on the highway and who listened to them, not the nearer crickets,” Ann muses during a passage in the book.

Possessed by romantic ideas and fueled by the landscape and the call of distant places, the novel functions as a meditation on the impulse to wander and dream.

 The exhibition examines similarly metaphoric map-inspired works. Artists Tomoko Abe, Doug Beube, David Bligh, András Böröcz, Lisa Corinne Davis, Dahlia Elsayed, George Ferrandi, Katarina Jerinic, Cal Lane, Marc Petrovic, Nikki Rosato, Viviane Rombaldi-Seppey, Sarah G. Sharp, Robbin Ami Silverberg, and John Williams, present work that encompasses imagery of the landscape, architecture, and the human body while at the same time takes flight into real and imagined notions of time and place.

 “Like all our programming, I think this exhibition will resonate with the community at large,” says Laura Nicholas, Gallery and Public Program Manager. “Maps of course serve a functional purpose, but they can be very emotionally evocative, as well, stirring feelings of nostalgia, longing, and escape. Those are feelings to which everyone can relate. ”

The exhibit is organized by Susan Nathenson, a ceramic artist and art educator, and Elizabeth Saperstein, an independent curator. Nathenson has served on the Art Center’s Gallery Advisory Committee and has taught in its ceramics program since the Art Center’s founding in 1970. Saperstein has served on the Gallery Advisory Committee since 2004.

“Throughout history, artists have used maps to respond to their surroundings and express emotions and ideas,” say the curators. “The artists in Anywhere But Here continue this tradition of exploring cartography as an art form.”