Artists Work In Vivid Color

The turnip’s gnarled skin and desiccated sprouts stand out all the more because of the vivid red background they’ve been placed in front of. Nearby is a head of lettuce rendered inedible by time and neglect, a beet imploding with rot, a potato molding and sprouting at the same time. Joy Bush’s vibrantly decaying vegetables are part of ​“The Shape of Color” — the latest exhibit at City Gallery on Upper State Street, running now through Aug. 8, featuring the work of Bush, Judy Atlas, Rita Hannafin, and Tom Peterson — and, it turns out, born of a deeply political moment.

Bush recalled beginning her vegetable photography series at 5:30 a.m. the morning after the Nov. 3 presidential election, when she awoke to the news that the former president had not conceded. In her refrigerator, she said, was a piece of kale, withered and broken. ​“This is how I feel,” she thought. ​“I feel like I’ve been battered and tormented and broken.”

In identifying with the vegetable, she found a background for it of construction paper she had around the house and photographed it. She then looked at the other produce she had in the fridge. ​“I didn’t let all the food in the refrigerator rot,” she said with a laugh. ​“But I left some of them out on the counter to help with the deterioration.”

Then, as Bush observed the changes in the plants, she saw something beyond the worn-out despair. ​“I became fascinated with it,” she said — the textures and colors that appeared on the produce. She saw the vegetables sprouting, extending roots, reaching toward life. ​“It gave me hope that things can regenerate,” she said. Even the vegetables that didn’t sprout, she thought, could be composted. ​“New things can come out of it later.”

At the same time, she recognized the absurdity of what the project entailed. ​“Sometimes, walking past the counter, I’d think, ​‘what am I doing here?’ Which was how I felt generally.” The method and the message intertwined. ​“I kept trying to make the best of all of it,” she said.

That the images are a political statement — one that only intensified between Nov. 3 and the Capitol riot on Jan. 6 — is something Bush is comfortable with. ​“All art is political, even when you say it’s not,” she said. Working on the project, meanwhile, ​“became a ray of hope for me that things will get better, though i don’t know if it will.”

She also discovered in the shutdown project a new avenue for making art. In past projects Bush had drawn inspiration from the outer world around her. Deprived of that, she said, ​“something happened — it wasn’t because I went out and saw something. It came from within.” She has the sense now, as many do, of having learned something from going through the pandemic, about herself and those around her. She finds herself wondering what those lessons will coalesce into as we, as a society, grapple with emerging from a most unusual and difficult time.

“It’ll be interesting to see what it really was about,” she said.

Not all the work in the show was created during the shutdown, but part of the show’s direction — as the title of it implies — involves a return to fundamentals, to the building blocks of hue and geometry. ​“For this show, Atlas explores what happens to color, comparing geometric shapes with softer, organic flowing forms. These abstract paintings celebrate the elements of visual art: color, line, textures, light and intensity,” an accompanying note explains.

“I really enjoyed painting the work that is featured in this show,” Atlas said. ​“Before we knew the title of the show, I realized I was playing with both shapes and colors — shapes changing from geometric triangles, circles and squares to wavy shapes suggesting a landscape. Finally the last painting I did was a true color exploration. I painted quiet, dull, mixed colors creating more subtle changes in the shapes in the painting.” 

Tom Peterson shows similar work to Atlas, in a natural extension of the work that has driven his photography. The prints are, in fact, inspired by photographs of architecture like those he has taken in the past. ​“From these, I created shapes and formations of primary colors. Developed during the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was my effort to escape back into a childhood fondness for coloring with crayons,” he said.

The show also marks the City Gallery debut of its newest member, textile artist Rtia Hannafin. Having a textile artist in a show exploring the relationship between shape and color makes a lot of sense, but Hannafin doesn’t restrict her own work to geometric colors and patterns. ​“She weds her love of color, physical materials, and sewing to shape a story,” an accompanying note reads. ​“In her pictorial art quilts, she uses fabric like paint to create shapes and applies free motion quilting to ​‘draw’ and play with thread, adding layers of textural elements to the finished pieces.” American Texture is an ​“homage to immigrants who came to New England textile mills at the turn of the 20th century. They arrived in a strange land of promise, in search of food, jobs, and freedom. Ghostly organza floats lightly over the flag beneath, ethereal reminders of a past repeating itself today, connecting our past with our present.” As a whole, the artists’ work in ​“Shape of Color” can be seen as a cycle of perceiving the world — finding the basic shapes and colors that make up the world we see, and then using those shapes and colors to return back to it.

“Shape of Color” runs at City Gallery, 994 State St., through Aug. 9. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for hours and more information.