I went to the the Mennello Museum of American Art, (900 East Princeton Street, Orlando, FL 32803) to sketch the Free Family Day on the Second Sunday of the month. This just happened to line up with Mother’s Day. At the front desk, there was a free rose for every mother who came to the museum on that day. On display in the entry gallery were fairly large twisted metal sculptures along with the preparatory drawings on the walls. I decided to sit on a bench and sketch the sextant who greeted guests and handed out roses to the moms. Quite a few museum guests brought their mom along for a day at the museum.
On exhibit in the museum now is, “When the Water Rises: Recent Paintings by Julie Heffernan“, who uses the power of paint’s materiality and immediacy in the Mennello Museum’s exhibition.
She brings form to the reality of our environmental and sociopolitical
problems. This exhibition debuts nine new works by the artist.
Heffernan’s work explores the imagery of the mind’s eye to create
complex environments. Her recent paintings create alternative habitats
in response to the environmental disaster and planetary excess. With
rising waters, she imagines worlds in trees or on rafts in which
undulating mattresses, tree boughs, and road signs guide the journey.
Construction cones interrupt the landscape signaling places to stop,
enter tiny interior worlds, and reflect on the human condition—its
hopeless activity, violence, failure, and redemption. Heffernan tends
these alternative environments to safeguard bounties we cannot live
without. In other moments, she names and points fingers to those people
and activities implicated in recent calamities of both the physical and
socio-political environment. Intricately wrought, Heffernan’s paintings
evoke the fantastical allegory of Hieronymus Bosch and the sublime of
Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt.
Also on exhibit in the Marilyn L. Mennello Sculpture Garden outside are two large sculptures, “Waltzing Matilda” and “Twin Vortexes” by American sculptor Alice Aycock. The Mennello Museum inaugurated the Grounds for Exhibitions with these beautiful works which
were originally part of series of seven sculptures
in Aycock’s significant outdoor exhibition on Park Avenue in Manhattan
entitled Park Avenue Paper Chase. Grounds for Exhibition features
year-long large-scale sculpture exhibitions by nationally renowned
American artists who otherwise would not be shared with Orlando
audiences. The sculptures will be on display through September 2018.