Mitchell • Giddings Fine Arts is honored to present two solo exhibits, Paul Bowen: Woodlark, sculpture fashioned from scavenged seaside material, along with his works on paper, and Space: an odyssey, featuring artist Fran Bull’s acrylic paintings inspired by cosmic imagery from the James Webb space telescope. 

Bowen has centered his life around the ocean, particularly the beaches of Provincetown. As an inveterate beachcomber he collects the humble bits and remains of human commerce, led by his curiosity and appreciation for the random objects forgotten, abandoned and washed ashore. The artist combines and balances his weathered items into carefully realized sculpture, often to be mounted on a wall.

“Bowen is known for working a peculiar magic upon mundane, discarded detritus no one else would even notice. His marvelous constructions emanate a shy lyricism tinged at times with whimsy and always displaying a beguiling balance of strangeness and inevitability. (Christorher Volpe, Studio Visit: Paul Bowen, Art New England, Jan./ Feb. 2021). The same might be said of the artist’s spare prints and drawings, as Bowen removes – “washes away” – all but the formal, stylized shapes, Bowen’s own found objects. 

The word Woodlark is borrowed from the old term ‘Mudlark’, the name for the poorest of Londoners who scavenged the banks of the river Thames for lost artifacts, coins and even pieces of coal to support themselves.

For thirty years I lived on Cape Cod where driftwood was a plentiful source of materials for my sculpture, and could be gathered just a few yards from my studio.

My wife and I have lived next to a covered bridge in Vermont for nineteen years now, and here I scavenge, from river banks, dams and burn piles. In 2011 Hurricane Irene caused immense damage throughout the area, bringing pieces of houses, decks, furniture and all manner of household goods down river, spreading them all over the countryside and even out to the Atlantic Ocean. Ironically a resource of materials for many years to come.

In this exhibition, pieces of fish box, beehive frames, sun bleached boards and fragments of old sails, some gathered years ago, find their way into structures that are simply built, but bear in mind texture, color and space.

And these days I particularly consider how some connect me with family members now long dead, architects, a ship’s carpenter and my grandfather who worked in a hardware store and engraved name-plates for coffins, in his spare time.

~Paul Bowen

Website

Paul Bowen is a sculptor, printmaker and master of assemblage from found objects. His work is in both public and private collections, and he has exhibited world-wide in galleries and museums.