Ling-Wen Tsai, “Rising/Sinking Study Chair,” wood and milk paint, 12 x 12 x 5 inches. Photo courtesy of Corey Daniels Gallery and Life Forms

One of the great pleasures of visiting the Corey Daniels Gallery in Wells is always the hunt. The sprawling spaces are packed with interesting art, objects and fascinating juxtapositions of them that one stumbles upon by chance. The current hunt that Daniels offers us is “Life Forms” (through September 21), the debut exhibition of a new women’s sculpture collective of the same name.

The idea for the collective came a year ago from Leah Gauthier and Bronwen O’Wril, another artist and mother whom Gauthier met at a summer camp for children she ran. It was largely a response to the isolation of the pandemic, which sparked a deep desire for community in both women. Gauthier and O’Wril compiled a list of artists they admired, and the 12 who now make up the collective began meeting over Zoom to plan not one but several exhibitions. Five are in the works, with confirmed stops at Speedwell Gallery in November (all 12 artists), the University of Southern Maine (focusing on four of the sculptors), and a yet-to-be-announced final venue just “marked” for 2027.

For this exhibition, many of the women have drawn on existing work, but going forward there will be more conversations between the new work they will be creating, influenced by the women’s creative interactions. So it is fitting that Daniels is the first port of call, as her very individual visions are more suited to individual rather than group viewing.

Besides Gauthier and O’Wril, the collective includes Jackie Brown, Lynn Duryea, Kazumi Hoshino, Elaine K. Ng, Ashley Page, Veronica Perez, Celeste Roberge, Naomi David Russo, Ling-Wen Tsai and Erin Woodbrey. It’s impossible to cover everyone, even though the work is consistently interesting. Each artist presents two works.

I was immediately drawn to Woodbrey’s Surface Cleaner, and especially to Waters, for which, as with Surface Cleaner, she covers disposable containers—bleach bottles, gallon jugs of spring water or milk, etc.—with gauze and a paste of ash and plaster of Paris, which she places on top of upside-down tomato cages.

Erin Woodbrey, “Waters (From the Carrier Bag Series),” disposable container, ash, plaster, gauze, wire, 55 x 10 x 13 inches. Photo courtesy of Corey Daniels Gallery and Life Forms

Both works have an interesting sense of visual volume and porosity, and draw attention to many things: including the idea of ​​plastics as part of a cycle of human consumption and waste, and of course their fate as pollutants. More broadly, however, they can point to the transience of everything man-made, its lasting impact on our conditions of existence, and the way nature responds to and in some ways survives human presence. The covering of gauze, ash and plaster recalls objects from shipwrecks buried at immense depths beneath the ocean, or occasionally protruding from riverbeds covered in mud and/or encrustations of coral and other marine life.

The consequences of their harmful contents are, at this point, a fait accompli. But the containers themselves—and the concepts of containment and storage—have been embalmed by nature in a way to protect itself by sealing it from further harm. Microplastics, of course, have since been officially found in fossil records. But nature can be powerful in the face of human onslaught, ultimately proving the undeniable and innate vulnerability of human existence. “Waters” adds another consideration: the effects of action and inertia on the state of fluids (or our bodies, or our very being) as we stand, lie on our sides, or pour.

Ashley Page’s work is also about containers and holding. Ostensibly, her sculptures are made of basket forms. But in a broader sense, they are metaphors for the body and mind, both vessels for identity, personal narratives and experiences. The title “Black and Porous” is a statement about the physical form of a sculpture. But it can also be read as a container for the ever-evolving black experience, which defies monolithic categorization and instead represents a palette of manifestations and consciousness.

Ashley Page, “Black Seeds”, wire, handmade abaca paper, wood stain. Photo courtesy of Corey Daniels Gallery and Life Forms

“Black Seeds” is a touching, delicate allusion to holding. The three larger forms are reminiscent of seed pods and all their associations with creation, growth and maturation. However, the largest form houses two smaller ones, which also evokes a baby or a womb and thus a continuum of generations and evolution.

Veronica Perez also explores cultural origins and the sense of connection that comes with them. Her works, such as “Suspensión” here, are made from synthetic hair in “braided circles,” making them physical embodiments of community memory and identity. As in Page’s work, the amorphous nature of the resulting forms and the intertwined physicality of their weaving also convey a sense of the ever-changing experience of heritage and identity, and the influence of the world (here, the white European world) on that identity through colonialism, theft of the homeland, displacement, and so on.

Veronica Perez, “Suspensión,” synthetic hair, wood, burlap, 36 x 48 x 12 inches. Image by Jo Silver

Here, Perez cradles her tall, woven figure in muslin straps suspended from a wooden frame. The allusions could be many: it could be an injured or abused body on a stretcher, a delicate support structure for her experiences, or, as the title suggests, an intermittent state between realities (of separation and integration, inside and outside, exposure and protection, and other possibilities).

Roberge’s work has long addressed the environment, particularly the crisis of rising sea levels in response to global warming. ‘Seaweed Will Be Lapping at Your Doorstep #2’ references the adaptability and resilience of seaweed and is made of seaweed and wax layered over her own rubber boots. ‘Long Seaweed Boat’ is a bronze sculpture made of seaweed shaped into a boat.

Celeste Roberge, “Long Seaweed Boat,” bronze cast from a seaweed leaf, 7.25 x 29 x 6 inches. Photo courtesy of Corey Daniels Gallery and Life Forms

Both sculptures are different forms of what Roberge calls “survival gear” – different means by which we can wade through and/or escape the destruction of our oceans. The boots (this series also includes clothing items such as a wetsuit and a fisherman’s sweater) are evocative, but more literal. Roberge’s boat, which was part of a larger exhibition last year called “Women of the Gulf” that included many female sculptures made of seaweed and cast in bronze, has a moving kind of grace and elegance that transcends the specific subject it addresses.

The two works by Ling-Wen Tsai – “Rising/Sinking”, studies of a chair and a bench – are the only works in the exhibition where I would have liked more space. I would also have liked them to be on higher plinths. The reason for this is that they are very quiet, intimate works and you want to get very close to them.

Basically, they consist of a blue base into which or from which said furniture sinks or emerges. They are quite unlike anything this artist has done before, although we could make a connection to the concept of things manifesting or receding into non-manifestation. The blue could also indicate rising and falling sea levels, and indeed her artist statement speaks in part of her “interest in the relationship and tension between the human and non-human worlds and how they affect and influence each other.”

Leah Gauthier, “Partly Cloudy,” acrylic, gouache, and silk thread on linen, 18 x 18 inches. Photo courtesy of Corey Daniels Gallery and Life Forms

For me, however, the silence of the work comes from the sense of immersion in or emergence from states of being. There is something profoundly silent about the blue pedestal. It feels like a kind of void in nothingness, where there is literally no existence—of objects, concepts, forms, even states of mind. In this sense, it conveys an unbearably beautiful peacefulness, so much so that we want to sink into it and leave all worldly possessions and worries behind. The tiny size of the chair and bench, furthermore, evokes the insignificance not only of man-made things, but of human existence itself. They feel entirely temporary, resting on anything but solid ground.

There are many ideas here. The exquisitely constructed circular silk paintings of Gauthier that look like color studies and/or maps of the sky on “partly cloudy” and “mostly sunny” days. The geological or tree-like shapes of Brown’s 3D-printed ceramic forms. The harmonization of different stone textures that appears in Hoshino’s works. The perfect glazes of Lynn Duryea’s sculptures that speak of erosion, decay, and the passage of time. It’s a worthwhile hunt in every way.

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