RECENT WORK
NEW YORK, NY—Color, texture, rhythm. Fragments from ancient cultures and symbols from the world’s great religions. These elements shape aesthetic language in a compelling exhibition of reliefs by sculptor Mary Lou Alberetti that will be running at Blue Mountain Gallery from February 25 through March 21.
Alberetti, a professor emerita from Southern Connecticut State University and a Connecticut native, has drawn inspiration from many years of extensive travel and study. In her works, we experience in poetic shorthand the power of these cultures, and contemplate the positive and negative results when their inherent traditions collide.
On one hand, there is the joyous panoply of archways, columns, crosses and quatrefoils – symbols of the richness of centuries on a global scale. On the other are the increasing impediments to clear vision that one encounters in her ceramic doorways – seemingly as complex and at times impenetrable as the rusted metal remnants that she overlays.
She has drawn inspiration from the architecture of Italy, Morocco, Spain and Turkey – and melded it with a deep love of nature and an awareness of the fleeting properties of light. In these recent works -- imbued with dramatic color and embossed with found materials – we encounter a seasoned artist taking on the viewer and the world-- through beauty and with increased urgency.
Throughout my career as an artist, I have lived and taught in Italy and have studied the architecture of Spain, France, Italy, Turkey and Ireland. My creative impulse has found expression in clay sculptural reliefs and mixed-media/collage. Both the process and the theme are equally important considerations for the creation of my works. I use architectural and historical references, some literal, some more abstract. I create works in which I hope to distill both the beauty and lessons of antiquity, as I explore how the fragments of a culture embody the its aesthetic and philosophical underpinnings.
WORKS IN COLLECTIONS