A Natural Response

On Friday, April 9, from 6 to 9 p.m., the Cincinnati Arts Association's Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts will premiere three new exhibitions linked to our interaction and response to landscape and nature: Icons of Absence : Icons of Presence, the expressive and lush oil paintings of Dana Saulnier that merge landscape and figurative elements in an evocative dialogue; a natural response, the exquisitely and intuitively executed black and white sumi ink paintings of Nancy Fletcher Cassell that tap the unconscious mind and intuitive responses to nature; and sticky wicket, a site-specific installation by Andrew Loughnane that playfully subverts the lawn game of croquet through the examination of social conventions and competitive instincts.

Informed by nature, Nancy Fletcher Cassell (Union, Ky.), has created lyrical black and white sumi ink paintings for more than thirty years that intuitively seek to define our relationship with the environment. Inspired by this vast body of work, a natural response will feature a new series of sumptuous and enigmatic paintings, as well as a dynamic and rhythmic installation where Cassell surrounds the viewer with a continuous banded horizon of imaginative landscape that taps the unconscious mind and seeks to reconnect us with nature in an elegant frenzy of black and white. Cassell’s beautifully flowing imagery evokes the work of Arshile Gorky and Philip Guston, creating new worlds through her masterful strokes of sumi ink.

Nancy Fletcher Cassell has lived and worked in the greater Cincinnati area for the past thirty years. She received a bachelor of science in painting and art education from Middle Tennessee State University in 1970 and earned a master of fine arts in drawing from the University of Cincinnati in 1979. From 1980-84 she taught painting, drawing and design at Mount Saint Joseph College. Cassell is the recipient of three Al Smith Fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council, an NEA Regional Fellowship from the Southern Arts Federation, two Summerfair, Inc. grants, a grant from Art Matters and two grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. In addition, she has participated in residency fellowships at Yaddo and The Virginia Center for Creative Arts. Her work is represented in the permanent collections of the Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, Ark.; The Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, Oh.; and the Owensboro Museum of Fine Art, Owensboro, Ky. She currently lives in Union, Ky. and maintains a studio at the Essex Studio complex in Cincinnati.