Mary Lou Alberetti - Ruins And Remnants On View at Blue Mountain Gallery

Color, texture, rhythm. Fragments from ancient cultures and symbols from the world's great religions. These elements shape aesthetic language in a compelling exhibition of reliefs by sculptor Mary Lou Alberetti that will be running at Blue Mountain Gallery from February 25 through March 21. Alberetti, a professor emerita from Southern Connecticut State University and a Connecticut native, has drawn inspiration from many years of extensive travel and study.

In her works, we experience in poetic shorthand the power of these cultures, and contemplate the positive and negative results when their inherent traditions collide. On one hand, there is the joyous panoply of archways, columns, crosses and quatrefoils - symbols of the richness of centuries on a global scale. On the other are the increasing impediments to clear vision that one encounters in her ceramic doorways - seemingly as complex and at times impenetrable as the rusted metal remnants that she overlays.

She has drawn inspiration from the architecture of Italy, Morocco, Spain and Turkey - and melded it with a deep love of nature and an awareness of the fleeting properties of light. In these recent works - imbued with dramatic color and embossed with found materials - we encounter a seasoned artist taking on the viewer and the world- through beauty and with increased urgency.