YOU ARE INVITED TO”EVERY LOVE HAS ITS LANDSCAPE”STANDARD SPACE”, ON SATURDAY, APRIL 6TH

When: Saturday, April 6 from 4-6PM

Where: 147 Main Street, Sharon, CT, 06069 

“The places in which any significant event occurred become embedded with some of that emotion and so to recover the memory of the place is to recover the emotion, and sometimes to revisit the place uncovers the emotion. Every love has its landscape. This place, which is always spoken of as though it only counts when you’re present, possesses you in its absence, takes on another life as a sense of place, a summoning in the imagination with all the atmospheric effect and association of powerful emotion. The places inside matter as much as the ones outside.” – A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solni

I remember seeing a photograph of Katherine’s a decade ago. It was of her hometown in Rochester, NY. During this time I was spending most of my money traveling to different places in upstate New York each weekend. I couldn’t get enough. It was as if Katherine was one of the first to capture the feeling of this land for me. Each photograph made me ache. Every landscape has a spirit. Years later I met Kyle and that very day we found ourselves in his home studio. My eyes darted to a painting of a blue deer that seemed to have its origins in longing, or what Solnit refers to as “the blue of distance.” I had never encountered an almost completely monochromatic painting that had such an effect on me. Informally, the term “blue” comes from an old English word for melancholy or sadness. Katherine and Kyle are lovers. Their love feels rooted. Almost familial. Uncomplicated, organic, and charged by each season. Recently, Katherine and I stood on her porch on a Sunday morning. Kyle had just left for his studio, now down the road. It was March. We gazed over the rolling hills and spoke of the concept of home. Later Katherine picked catnip from her yard for me to bring to my cat Benny. Benny passed away the next day, and that very catnip was the land within her as she left this physical plane. Every love has its landscape. “It is that the joy that comes from other people, always risks sadness, because even when love doesn’t fail, mortality enters in.” Katherine and Kyle are among the select few who make art for art’s sake. And the even fewer that are extraordinarily good at it. The exhibition invites viewers to consider these places both psychic states and geographical sites. Our landscapes somehow stabilize our grief. Katherine’s photographs and Kyle’s paintings embody this concept. Of course, to be able to carry within a spirit of a place is also lucky; “Even nostalgia and homesickness are privileges not granted to everyone” -Emily McElwreath

Kyle Nilan (b. 1986, Boston, MA) is an artist working in Livingston, NY. He received an MFA in sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BFA in printmaking from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In 2019 he was an Artist in Residence at the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY. His work was recently included in an exhibition, Night Vision, at the Warner Gallery at Millbrook School in Millbrook, NY.

Katherine March Driscoll (b. 1986, Rochester, NY) is a photographer and archivist working in Germantown, NY. She received an MFA in Imaging Arts from the Rochester Institute of Technology, and a BFA in photography and ceramics from the NYSCC at Alfred University. In 2014 she was an Artist in Residence and Education Fellow at the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY, and in 2021, she was an Artist in Residence at Stoveworks in Chattanooga, TN, where she self-published an edition of handmade books. Her work was recently included in an exhibition, T(HERE), at CREATE Council on the Arts in Catskill, NY. She is currently a Lecturer in Creative Arts at Siena College.