Carole Kunstadt At Rice Polak Gallery
It’s that time of year when I have the true honor of introducing Rice Polak Gallery’s newest artists starting with Carole Kunstadt. Carole’s works reference artifacts, antique manuscripts and books, deconstructing paper and text and using it in metaphorical ways. Through the manipulation of these antique materials, history, memory and time merge in a hybrid form – revealing how language can become visual through re-interpretation, often invoking a metaphysical quality of contemplation and timelessness.
Utilizing text from writings by pro-feminist, abolitionist, writer Hannah More, published in 1791 – More’s life-long overriding cause was galvanizing women to act not as domestic ornaments, but as thinking, engaged and responsible beings. Hannah gave the abolitionist movement a public voice with her writings.
The Ovum Series consistently utilizes the egg form as a metaphor for Margaret Fuller’s ideas, as it symbolizes fertility, hope, perseverance and possibility. Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli was an educator, social reformer, transcendentalist, critic, abolitionist, the first American female foreign correspondent and woman’s rights advocate.