New exhibition of Rhode Island artists at T.F. Green Airport opens
The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) announced a new art exhibition on display at TF Green Airport’s GREEN SPACE Gallery, which RISCA manages on behalf of the Rhode Island Airport Corporation (RIAC). The new exhibition features works of art by Rhode Island artists Karen Drysdale Harris, of Cranston, Felicia Megginson, of Providence, and Pneuhaus Collective, of Rumford, and will be on display through May 24.
“RISCA is thrilled to be able to continue to highlight RI’s incredible artists through exhibits at the gallery at TF Green Airport. This gallery provides a terrific way to greet travelers by sharing our State’s outstanding creativity and impressing on visitors RI’s thriving arts community—a key economic driver.” –RANDALL ROSENBAUM, RISCA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
The artists are:
Karen Drysdale Harris, of Cranston, is a Jamaican-born watercolorist and oil painter and graduate of Rhode Island School of Design. Her primary sources of inspiration are nature and the memory of her Jamaican roots. Karen’s “Doctor Birds-Hummingbirds” uses the banana leaves that she has grown to engage the viewer in experiencing the memories they evoke of her Jamaican childhood on her grandparent’s banana farm. The banana plant symbolizes her memory of her immigrant story of displacement and the comfort she took in the natural world that surrounded her.
Felicia Megginson is a Providence-based photographic artist who holds an M.A. in Photographic Studies from New York University. Much of her representational imagery is centered in identity as it relates to cultural, societal, and familial pressures that work to form it. “I use photography as a means of measuring and marking my place in the world, while also documenting the energies that connect and flow through us.”
The ongoing series “Numinous World” consists of four suites of images that are an extension of this practice. These fractal-like images are ethereal, sensual, macabre and slightly ominous, reflecting her emotional state since the passing of both parents in 2016 and 2018, and the oppressive uncertainty of the ongoing pandemic. For Megginson, simply “being” in natural spaces provides restorative and grounding energy, and this series is her extension of that grounding to anyone who views her work.
Pneuhaus Collective, of East Providence, is an art & design collective that builds with light, fabric, and air to create experiential inflatable environments and sculptures. Every Pneuhaus project is approached as an opportunity to investigate the fundamental properties of perceptual experience⎼-space, light, color, sound⎼- to incite curiosity and wonder. Driven by a spirit of experimentation, they continue to build on the visionary legacy of inflatable architecture’s history by centering a utopian edge in creating spaces for social joy and collaboration.
Exhibitors for GREEN SPACE were chosen by pane lists Kathy Hodge, Viera Levitt and Frank Poor.
GREEN SPACE Gallery and Block Island Airport Gallery are a partnership between the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the Rhode Island Airport Corporation, promoting outstanding work by artists living and working in Rhode Island. The galleries present art to an ever-changing audience of local, national and international travelers.
Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) is a state agency supported by appropriations from the Rhode Island General Assembly and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. RISCA provides grants, technical assistance and staff support to arts organizations and artists, schools, community centers, social service organizations and local governments to bring the arts into the lives of Rhode Islanders.
Rhode Island Airport Corporation (RIAC) operates T.F. Green Airport and the five general aviation airports in Rhode Island. A long-time supporter of public art in Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Airport Corporation has worked with RISCA several public art commissions for T. F. Green and Block Island airports.
