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November Issue 2007
Charleston County Public Library in Charleston, SC, Offers Works by Aija Sterns
The
Charleston County Public Library in Charleston, SC, is presenting
the exhibit, Coast, featuring paintings by Aija Sterns.
The exhibit will be on view in the library's Saul Alexander Gallery
through Nov. 30, 2007.
This series of paintings created by Sterns, is done in gouache on paper. Gouache (pronounced gwash) is an opaque watercolor medium. The paintings, more or less abstracted, are from a body of work spanning the past two years.
Sources for images are often from the natural environment: vegetation, coastal marshes, fields, waterways, expansive skies, and so on. "I enjoy these images for their own sake, as well as the symbolism they provide," says Sterns.
"Literal translation of subjects is not nearly as interesting to me as the part left to the imagination," adds Sterns. "Sometimes it's just the color or the play of light that captures my imagination, and then I give them a favorite context. Sometimes it's about the quiet and calm in the landscape, or it could be an elusive exotic quality that I notice."
" I think mother nature shows herself best. What we can do best is interpret our own human experience and reflect ourselves in our work. An aspect of nature can serve to display a feeling or mood in a painting, or depict commentary about events in life. Of additional interest to me is when the work is left open to the viewer's imagination, or if it can engage one in contemplation," says Sterns.
Sterns received a BFA from Alfred College of Ceramics in New York, and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design. After arriving in Charleston, where she lived for ten years, she moved to Goose Creek, SC, where she has been for the past several years.
For further information check our SC Institutional
Gallery listings, or call the Library at 843/805-6803 or visit
(www.ccpl.org).
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