Work by Melinda Ostraff, Jenny Ostraff, Elise Boucher Ostraff, Alexis Fryer Ostraff
MARCH 16 – MAY 11, 2018
The four artists in this show are a mother, a daughter, and two daughters-in-law. They work in a variety of two dimensional media including encaustic, collage, painting, and printmaking. In addition to being artists, they are connected by a love of the plant life that they cultivate in pots and gardens around their homes. Their mother, Melinda, is an ethnobotanist and her knowledge and interests have inspired and intrigued her daughters as they have become familiar with her work. They have come to appreciate more fully how plants are an important part of each of our lives. Plants feed, heal, build, inspire, beautify, and provide the air we breathe. The artists each take great pleasure in venturing out into nature and enjoying the plant life that is so varied, vast, and beautiful. On the other hand, a plant that occupies one’s most frequented and comfortable rooms may become as dear as a friend. The artists appreciate this relationship as well as the inspiration that a plant’s form, pattern, and texture provide in creating imagery. They have each provided a selection of work that reflects the relationships they have to plants and observations they have made as they have approached plants as the shared subject of their work.
*Featured image: Alexis Fryer Ostraff, White Geranium, Monotype, 2018