Gelb Gallery Debuts Collaborative, Individual Works by Two Local Artists

Gayle Caruso and Cathy McLaurin Team Up in ‘Locating the Garden’

February 17, 2009 — The Gelb Gallery at Phillips Academy debuts “Locating the Garden: Stepford Wives and the Innocent” from Monday, February 9, through Friday, March 27.  The show features mixed media collaborations between Gayle Caruso’s “Stepford Wives” series and Cathy McLaurin’s “The Innocent” and “Venice Scraps” series.

An opening reception will take place Saturday, February 21, from 3 to 5 p.m., and a gallery talk will be held Tuesday, March 3, at 8 p.m. The show, reception, and talk are all open to the public. The Gelb Gallery is located in George Washington Hall on Chapel Avenue on the Phillips Academy Campus.

In “Locating the Garden: Stepford Wives and the Innocent,” the two artists integrate varied pieces concerning fairy tales, religion, and fashion to tell the tale of an “ultimate perfection, still squeezing within the boundaries of rules impressed upon the mind during childhood,” says Caruso. Her “Stepford Wives” series, which takes its name from the 1972 satirical horror novel, explores the notion of what it is to be a “good girl” who accepts the barriers and confines set out before her, to live in a “perfect garden.”

Cathy McLaurin’s “The Innocent” series sets out to create a “perfect garden” by depicting animals, such as birds, rabbits, and bears, coexisting peacefully and communicating in a common language. According to McLaurin, the animals “live far from the hurt so often exacted on them and on their habitat by those who have forgotten their place in the garden.” Also featured are pieces from her series “Venice Scraps,” which features mixed media work incorporating bits of debris from the streets of Venice.   

About the artists:

Gayle Caruso, who has a studio in Andover, Mass., graduated from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the SMFA Fifth Year program. She is a painter, mixed media artist, printer, and bookmaker, working primarily on paper and installation. She has studied in Venice and Umbria, Italy, and has attended many workshops in New York, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Most of her work is shown in the museums and galleries of colleges and schools, in art centers, and in alternative gallery spaces.

In addition to showing her work, she has collaborated with artist Cathy McLaurin to produce and curate many group shows.

Cathy McLaurin is Special Projects & Beland Gallery Director at Essex Art Center in Lawrence, Mass.  A North Carolina native, she earned a liberal arts degree, with a concentration in studio art, from Meredith College, Raleigh, N.C.  She also studied classical painting in an apprenticeship program in Paris. Since 2001, she has been creating audience participatory installations and work on found paper—such as wallpaper, paper bags, and player piano scrolls.

McLaurin is the recipient of a 2007 Puffin Foundation grant. In 2006, she was awarded an artist residency at Southwest School of Art in San Antonio. This spring she will be a visiting artist at University of Tennessee–Knoxville.