IN THE ANNEX: September 2023

Heather Binder + Jaina Cipriano + Kathryn Shagas

August 31- October 1, 2023.
SoWa First Friday Art Walk: Friday, September 1, 2023, | 5:00–8:00 PM

Abstracted presentations of the emotional life and the use of a strong graphical presence come together in the work of September’s Annex artists Kathryn Shagas, Heather Binder, and Jaina Cipriano. Binder uses ceramics as a part of her spiritual practice. For Cipriano, photography in built environments communicates the complex emotions of her growing up. Shagas’ monoprints and mixed media are informed by music and her experiences of the natural world.

PRICE LIST (pdf) ➢

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Heather Binder

Carved Wine Cup, wood-fired ceramics, 5 x 3.5 x 3.5 inches

Ashy Wave Vase, wood-fired ceramics, 8 x 10 x 8 inches

Carved Cup #2, wood-fired ceramics, 5 x 4 x 4 inches

Deep Dive, wood-fired ceramics, 9.5 x 8 x 7 inches

Dressed for the Ball, wood-fired ceramics, 9.5 x 8 x 7 inches

Fire and Ice, wood-fired ceramics, 8 x 5 x 4 inches

Reef Vase , wood-fired ceramics, 7 x 5 x 4 inches

Textured Wave Sculpture, wood-fired ceramics, 12 x 8 x 9 inches

Carved Cup #1

Carved Cup #1
wood-fired ceramics
5" x 3.5" x 3.5"

Heather Feiring Binder is a form-driven ceramic artist who treats ceramics as an embedded and significant element of her spiritual practice. Her work is a translation of natural patterns coupled with expressions of movement and flow. Each piece becomes an impression of the experience, not a replication of an inspiring object but an interpretation. In firing her work, she prefers the unpredictability of alternate atmospheric kilns. The flames and ash enhance the already altered surfaces and allow science and nature to merge, creating rich flowing earth tones. Binder aims to spotlight the hidden nuances and patterns of the natural world. The gentle curves of a meandering stream, textured surfaces of lichen-covered granite, the iridescent wings of a horsefly, the flight pattern of a honeybee, and the soft flow patterns on the surface of a lake inspire her to create. While finished pieces often resemble objects that may be familiar to the viewer, they may not fully recognize the subject enough to put a name to it.

Heather Binder is ceramic artist and dedicated arts educator. She earned an MFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Ceramics and a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University. She recently completed a month-long Fellowship at Arrowmont School for Arts and Crafts. She currently resides in Providence, RI, and her work has been shown and sold throughout the United States and in London, and Guatemala.

Jaina Cipriano

Untitled, photograph in built environment, 16 x 20 inches

Echoes, photograph in built environment, 16 x 20 inches

One More Year, photograph in built environment, 16 x 20 inches

Unsteady, photograph in built environment, 16 x 20 inches

What’s Left to Celebrate?, photograph in built environment, 16 x 20 inches

Who is the Dreamer?, photograph in built environment, 16 x 20 inches

Blurred Lines

Blurred Lines
photograph in built environment
13.5 x 20 inches

Jaina Cipriano is an experiential designer, filmmaker and photographer exploring the emotional toll of religious and romantic entrapment. Her worlds communicate with our neglected inner child and are informed by explosive colors, elements of elevated play and the push/pull of light and dark.

Cipriano is a self taught artist with a deep love for creative problem solving. She writes and directs award winning short films that wrestle with the complicated path of healing. In 2020 she released ‘You Don’t Have to Take Orders from the Moon’, a surrealist horror film wrestling with the gravity of deep co-dependency. Her second short, ‘Trauma Bond’ is a dreamy, coming of age thriller that explores what happens when we attempt to heal deep wounds with quick fixes.

Her photographic works forgoe digital manipulation, everything is created for the camera. She takes an immersive approach to working with models, approaching a shoot like a documentary photographer as her subject is let loose in a strange designed space. Working with her is often described as cathartic and playful.

Cipriano founded Finding Bright Studios - a design company in Lowell specializing in set design for music videos and immersive spaces. She has collaborated with GRRL HAUS, Boston Art Review, and was a Boston Fellow for the Mass Art Creative Business Incubator and a finalist in EforAll Merrimack Valley. Her photographic work has been shown internationally.

Kathryn Shagas

Windward, painted paper freeform collage on wood, 27.5 x 26.5 x 1.25 inches

Dreamscape, monotype, acrylic, drawing media on yupo, 26 x 20 inches

Passages, painted paper freeform collage on wood, 26 x 18.5 x .75 inches

Shimmy, monotype, acrylic, collage, drawing media on yupo, 26 x 20 inches

Transitions, painted paper freeform collage on wood, 36 x 40 x 1.25 inches

As soon as she enters a forest or steps onto a rocky shoreline, mixed media artist Kathryn Shagas feels part of a world humming with life. The sounds of wind and water calm the neural waves in her brain and immerse her senses in the rhythmic energy connecting everything around her. From the viewpoint of physics, all life in our universe is vibrating at various frequencies, including rocks, trees and objects that appear stationary. Today this delicate balance of rhythms that we depend on for life is endangered by climate change.

Drawing from her early training in piano and this interplay between equilibrium and chaos, Shagas lets music flow through her body, re-experiencing what Kandinsky called “stimmung,” the essential spirit of nature. She combines monotypes with paint and drawing media or constructs freeform collages with pieces cut from earlier paintings and dried acrylic bas relief remnants. Shagas thinks of these non-objective works as stories hidden in nature’s rhythms, a reminder of connection when there is still time to choose reconciliation and renewal.

Shagas holds a BFA in design from Philadelphia College of Art and has studied at the New York Studio School and Maryland Institute, College of Art. Her paintings are exhibited nationally, recently at Prince Street Gallery/NYC, Lights Outs Gallery/Norway, ME and Union of Maine Visual Artists/Portland and Damariscotta, ME. In 2022, she closed her 33-year graphic design firm to paint full-time. Shagas lives in Belfast, ME on the Gulf of Maine, which has warmed faster than 99% of the global ocean.