‘Poetic License’ July 5th – July 26th

Posted on June 15, 2024 by spacegalleryvt

Sharon Webster’s Solo Show at The S.P.A.C.E Gallery combines surprising materials, shapes, and language in evocative mixed media art installations!

Opening Reception: First Friday July 5th from 5-9pm (poetry reading by Webster at 6:30 & at 7:30 from her new book “O Song”)

Show Duration: July 5th – Friday July 26th

Gallery Hours: Thursday, Friday, Saturdays 12-5pm or by appointment.

Sharon Webster is an interdisciplinary artist in Burlington, Vermont. Her work moves through different materials, including fabric, language and more, to explore fresh renditions of vision and voice. Drawn to the intimate and the sensual as well as the mysteries of process, she is a frequent exhibitor and poet in Vermont and elsewhere. This solo exhibition, Poetic License, showcases the breadth and depth of her imagination in work both highly personal and common to all.

Webster’s predominantly new sculptural work in Poetic License is a kind of visual storytelling. Some pieces draw on her intimate relationship with her late mother. Others reflect on her deep connection with the natural world, not only its beauty but what it has to teach or warn us about. The work of human hands, past and present, is also celebrated and explored. An old wooden clothes dryer hung with sheer cloth and stitched words that resembles wings, a painting of men at work on an old dam in Kentucky, a series of 16 painted wooden boxes whose “tissue/flags” emerge as crows cawing a poem – the work takes viewers by surprise, challenges them in a gentle way and yet feels familiar, welcoming. Several works include stitched or painted words from Webster’s forthcoming book of poems, O Song. (See bio)

Webster says her work has “the aim of emotional evolution and healing.” Each piece is unique, but one common thread is the way they stir the subconscious to an alchemy of wonder.

Sharon Webster’s work was recently featured in the online exhibit, Afterlives, part of the international fiber artists organization, Surface Design Association.

Webster taught Studio Art, Word and Image, and Independent Studies at Burlington College and Community College of Vermont for a decade. She is also creatively involved in holistic work with developmentally challenged adults, helping them to live rich and normal lives. She has done this work since the 1980s.

Webster’s new collection of poetry, O Song, will be published in Fall 2024 by Salmon Poetry of Ireland and distributed there and in the US. Sharon’s book of poems and art, Everyone Lives Here, was published in 2014 by Fomite Press, Vermont.

For more details about Webster’s work, see her website: www.sharonwebster.com