Fountain Street's new show Juncture runs from October 11 - November 11, with an opening artist reception on Saturday, October 14th from 5-7pm. The show features core artists Marie Craig and Sara Fine-Wilson, who share some of their thoughts about theme, concept, and process below.

Marie on Theme: "For me, Juncture refers to a turning point, the place where the choice you make profoundly alters the trajectory of what follows, whether you know it at the time or not. The work I do now using cyanotype exploits that concept, since chance is a huge factor in the outcome of the piece."

Sara on Theme: "The way 3d forms relate to each other in space leads me down a path based on visual logic. During this process there comes a point when transition within a piece is needed. This moment is juncture for me. The change can come from a formal place or from an intuitive one."

Marie on Process: "I started making cyanotypes of plant life a few years back, while traveling in Australia, my second home. I couldn’t take eucalyptus leaves back with me (plant material can’t be brought back into the US), and ordinary photos didn’t capture the intimacy and emotion the shapes brought to me. But the cyanotypes did."

"I began to layer the leaves, with their iconic, organic shapes, over digital ‘negatives’ of evidence of man- street signs, buildings, ruins. The combinations, overlapping and obscuring one another, were visually striking. Using linen was at first a technical solution to the problem of rinsing large pieces of paper, and I saw huge advantages - the ability to create much larger works this way, not to mention the beautiful texture of the linen surface and the fluid nature of the final presentation.

It occurs to me that the making of my art is completely and inextricably wound around my daily life. I coat paper and fabric with photo-sensitive solutions in my basement, and hang them there in the dark to dry. I wrap the coated paper in heavy black garbage bags, and wait for a sunny, windless afternoon. Then I cut weeds from my garden, and expose the paper on my back deck. Or I fill my car with 7 ft. negatives and a trunk full of yard waste, and drive over to the loading dock of my studio building, where I expose those big guys.

Then back in the garbage bags, back home, where I rinse them in the bathtub, then the washer and dryer, and hang them on the clothesline to get a good view - the first time I actually see the final result.

My process is controlled chaos. Experience has taught me the parameters and limits of the technique, and how best to manipulate the negative, the plant material, the exposures, etc. but seasons, sun and wind work their own magic, and play at least as big a part in the process. I love allowing chance and the weather to be a partner in the process."

Sara on Process: "The practice of exploring form by producing multiples is a big part of where my work starts. I create forms based on the figure and the natural gesture that the clay embodies during different stages of plasticity. I do this through repeated acts of physical transformation like dropping, folding, stretching and ripping."

"I then explore how these forms can exist together in a gesture that amplifies the initial act of transformation. So, I may start by twisting multiple simple parts that then become part of a larger twisted form. I hold them next to each other, pile them on top of each other, and fit them together in as many ways as possible until it makes sense to me. I try to allow intuition to guide my process at all stages."

Marie on Concept: "Behind the obvious visual excitement I feel when I first see the striking blue color, and the relationships of the organic shapes intertwined with architecture, I think about the push and pull of human impact on the planet with the untamed wildness of nature. In this tug of war, it seems sometimes as though man subjugates his environment, but nature is powerful, persistent, and resilient. It continues to exert its presence despite efforts by us to impose order and control. In effect my process lets go of some that control, and the work is created in partnership with nature."

Sara on Concept: "My current work explores three dimensional forms and gestures that relate to fragility, balance, disintegration, motion, chaos and reaching. These ideas are ones I think about in relation to the way I exist in the world."

Juncture: Turning Points, Chance and Intuition