VISUAL ARTS

May 20, 2010 –June 16, 2010 Sherry Autor, of Somerville, will be presenting an interesting mix of her series “Chinese Landscapes” and “Pond’s Secrets” to create the “The Restless Planet” exhibition at the BAAK Gallery in Cambridge. These series were inspired by the beauty and drama of our restless planet. Autor is an artist and practicing clinical psychologist. She has a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and graduate degrees in psychology from Columbia and Harvard Universities. She is inspired by travel and exploration in Europe, the rainforests of Costa Rica, the Amazon, Africa, China, Alaska, and our National Parks, and is fueled by the urgency of the environmental and political problems facing our nation and the world. She creates oil, mixed media, and fabric collage paintings of invented landscapes and portraits. “The mountains and gorges of China have been venerated by its scholars and artists throughout the centuries. To be in the presence of mountains rising majestically from the Yangtze River, encircled by clouds and fog, is breathtaking. These mountains, now destroyed by the Chinese Government’s construction of the world’s largest dam, were host to thousands of farms and villages and to endangered wildlife. Some of nature’s ever-changing events are not apparent to casual observation,” while speaking of her series titled “Chinese Landscapes”. Autor reflecting on her inspiration behind the “Pond’s Secrets” series, “Beneath the placid surface of a pond, nature is at work on a microcosmic level. The plants and animals that constitute its ecosystem are engaged in an on-going drama of pond life. Each is engaged in an uninterrupted struggle to maintain its niche in the pond, to survive, and to perpetuate its species.”