Earthly Bound

Alejandra Cuadra + Ashley Page

March 2-April 2, 2023

SoWa First Friday Art Walk: Friday, March 3 | 5–8 PM
Artist Talk via Zoom: Tuesday, March 21 | 7 PM RSVP

Beginning March 2nd, Fountain Street Gallery will exhibit “Earthly Bound,” featuring new works by long-time friends and collaborators Alejandra Cuadra Sanchez and Ashley Page. Theirs was selected the winner of Fountain Street’s 2022 open call for exhibition proposals. While rooted in traditional methods of craft, such as paper making, textiles and ceramics, the artists infuse their practices with their personal histories and ongoing explorations, showcasing their unapologetic, authentic selves. As interdisciplinary artists weaving together their discoveries, Cuadra and Page create a space where their conversations come to life in inventive mixed media installations. Together the artists embody a personal approach to storytelling in order to give agency and visibility to underrepresented communities. The result is an exhibition in which struggles for freedom and belonging are expressed in a rich array of materials, beautifully transformed.

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Alejandra Cuadra

Alejandra Cuadra Sanchez embraces clay, wood, mixed media, and her proud Latina sensibility as she weaves, braids, and knots together her history—what was, what is, and what is to come. Feeling neither from here nor there, Cuadra seeks to reconnect to her roots in Peru. As an interdisciplinary maker, she says, “I don’t want to limit how I speak to just one medium.” In her practice, she harnesses the history of found objects and threads together meditations on identity, displacement, traditions, belonging, and a desire for freedom. Her installations reflect her quest—what it means to belong within the body, soul, community, and the rooted valleys on earth. Through her works she seeks to create a space where we can hear and feel aspects of the human heart that connect us all.

Cuadra holds a BFA in sculpture with a minor in public engagement from Maine College of Art & Design, where she was a Warren Public Engagement Fellow and received a Pillars Student Award. She also holds an Associate Degree from Cape Cod Community College. Transplanted from her homeland of Peru, she can never forget where she came from and she works to reclaim her sense of belonging in the U.S. Cuadra has attended residencies at Yale Norfolk School of Art, Monson Arts, Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, and Ellis Beauregard Foundation. She is continuing her creative path in an apprenticeship with Steve Kemp and Matthew Kemp, and as part of Mudflat’s Technical Education Program. She currently lives and is finding roots in the Greater Boston community.

Ashley Page

Ashley Page sees her practice as a vessel to present diverse representation and visibility to the African American image, intellect, and spirit. Merging traditional textile/fiber techniques with sculptural sensibilities and applications, her work reinterprets abstract portraiture. Stemming from a multi-racial home, Page often thinks about how the fusion of different cultures, teachings, and ancestral memory has led her down this path—one of exploring how seemingly unrelated materials and techniques intertwine to create a new narrative. She describes her work as “an ode to the people who came before me, a reflection of the time in which I currently reside, and a point of reference for those in the future.” As a maker, a curator, a woman of color, a community member, a little sister, and a daughter, she creates space for dialogue, representation, intergenerational exchange, and creative expression.

Page is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Portland, ME. She holds a BFA in sculpture and a minor in public engagement from Maine College of Art & Design, where she was a Warren Public Engagement Fellow and received the Heart and Soul Student Award. More recently, she was granted an Emerging Artist Award from St. Botolph Club Foundation and participated in a Maine Craft Association Apprenticeship under the mentorship of Lissa Hunter. Page is presently the Studio and Programs Coordinator at Indigo Arts Alliance, working within the intersection of art and activism. Her curatorial and studio practice has been seen in The Portland Museum of Art, Center for Afrofuturist Studies, The Abyssinian Meeting House, Congress Square Park and more.