As we end what has felt like an especially brief summer, late sunsets and crisp nights are a bittersweet reminder of darker days to come. The dog days are over, and it’s my impulse to jam all my last summer activities in, beach days and bike rides and everything all at once. But given the past few unseasonably warm Septembers, the actual end of summer is anyone’s guess.
Michele Lauriat’s drawings look exactly like that end of summer under the influence of climate change, with all the intensity that entails. They burst with the beautiful messiness of growth, yet the specter of disaster and decay beckons.
In Lauriat’s solo exhibition at Gallery 263, “The Sea Around Us,” she presents two bodies of work. Her “Rachel Carson” series nods to the visual similarities of sunrise and sunset, beginnings and endings, growth and environmental disaster. Her second, “Water Study,” fictionalizes experiences of water – borrowing from surfing videos and natural disaster documentaries. Positive and negative experiences of water are all included, making for a series pregnant with possibility.
Lauriat’s drawings are lush, saturated with strokes of detail and intricate, frenetic mark-making. They are full of rich color and texture. One diptych shows leaves in negative space, with pops of pink color. In one untitled piece, she names Montoya and Reznicek, two activists involved in protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2021.
The “Water Study” series is a work in progress, full of expressive blue line work. At the time of publication, Lauriat could share only example images of the series. They are experimental mixed media, many on mulberry paper. In one multipanel piece, each 12- by 18-inch piece of paper is folded into three vertical parts. Waves of blue, black and white bleed over from one part into another, with slight gaps over the paper’s folds.
The show is buzzing with life and at-times ominous energy, richly exploring the border between life and death. Like Roethke wrote: “Nothing would give up life: / Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.”
The exhibit is a perfect stop on the rush to enjoy the end of summer.
“The Sea Around Us: a solo exhibition by Michele Lauriat” is at Gallery 263, 263 Pearl St., Cambridgeport, Thursday through Oct. 5.
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