The Newport Art Museum will welcome three new exhibitions to its galleries this summer, including Joan Hall’s Sea of Heartbreak, which will be on view May 19 – July 29. Joining Sea of Heartbreak will be Rania Matar’s A Girl and Her Room (May 26 – August 5) and Cristi Rinklin’s Paramnesiac (June 15 – September 2).
An Opening Reception for all three shows will be held Thursday, June 14 from 5 – 7 pmduring the Museum’s popular late night event, Art After Dark. The Museum will remain open until 9 pm that evening. Museum members are admitted free, non-members $10 suggested donation, cash bar.
A panel discussion inspired by the exhibition on the topic of Art + Environmental Advocacy will take place Friday, July 6 at 6 pm. Speakers include Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Executive Director of Save the Bay Jonathan Stone, and Exhibiting Artist Joan Hall. The panel will be moderated by Avory Brookins, Environmental Reporter for WRNI. Admission to this event is free, but space is limited and advanced reservations are highly recommended.
The Newport Art Museum is located at 76 Bellevue Avenue, Newport, RI. Visitnewportartmuseum.org or call 401-848-8200 for details.
Joan Hall
Sea of Heartbreak
On view May 19 – July 29
A veteran sailor, Joan Hall understands the crisis of ocean pollution. Her stunning large-scale works of art and installations combine found or cast paper marine debris into handmade paper and explore the effects of plastic on the sea. As the artist notes, plastic has changed the marine ecosystem; ten percent of the world’s plastic winds up in the ocean, does not biodegrade, and floats indefinitely around the globe. Birds and marine wildlife also ingest this plastic. For “Sea of Heartbreak,” Hall focuses on the increase in algae bloom and invasive algae and dying coral reefs worldwide, the result of increasing ocean temperatures. Plastic pollution has contributed in part to this devastating ecological shift. Through the creation of complex layered arrangements of paper and objects in rich colors, Hall creates sculptures that are both alluring and yet cautionary as they remind us of the peril we will be in should we choose to ignore pollution.
Hall received her BFA at the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio and her MFA at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She studied papermaking with Garner Tullis at the Institute of Experimental Printmaking in San Francisco. She is the Emerita Kenneth Hudson Professor of Art in Sculpture at Washington University in St. Louis where she taught printmaking, papermaking, and sculpture. She has been a visiting artist internationally and is an art critic in the graduate program at RISD. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at the Museum of Nebraska Art, Anya Tish Gallery (Houston), Silkeborg Art Center (Denmark), the Rijswijk Museum and Apeldoorn Museum (both in The Netherlands), and Brooklyn Museum of Art. Her work is in numerous museum collections. Joan Hall lives in Jamestown, RI.