In celebration of Women's Month, the work of Baltimore artists Nancy Linden and Christy Bergland is on display through March 27 in the Pascal Center for the Performing Arts at Anne Arundel Community College.
The exhibit, "Awaiting Persephone," takes its name from "Winter Farm -- Awaiting Persephone," a Bergland painting that captures the late-winter barrenness of a farm where four pigs, their snouts earth-stained, root in the soil for signs of spring.
Bergland paints landscapes that extend boundaries and seem both natural and surrealistic, while Linden's subjects are women of different ages, sizes and colors who share a common strength needed to survive.
Both women have used art therapeutically.
Bergland has worked as an art psychotherapist since 1979, and Linden has worked in a program for Alzheimer's disease patients at Catonsville Commons facility.
Bergland's landscapes are seen through windows, doorways, or from porches, devices the artist employs to lead the eye into a wider vista.
Her large, sun-drenched "Adirondack Porch" draws the viewer into the scene and intrigues the eye with its play of light and shadow and a tiny patch of sky. The pattern is echoed in the surrealistic shadows cast on the porch floor, contrasting with the realistic whole.
Bergland's equally large canvas titled "Maine" is a vibrant study of curves: A curved wooden deck in the foreground leads to flat ground and the more distant curve of a pond that dissolves into a fluffy clouded sky echoing white curves against patches of blue.
Linden shares Bergland's sense of variety in her portraits of "displaced persons" as she employs media ranging from charcoal to oil to collage on wood, Masonite and canvas.
In one collage, Linden portrays with wood, fabric and newspaper a blues singer and her friend, both of whom seem almost invincible. Similar strength is apparent in a large work titled "Pink Slip," which portrays an old woman who might have seen it all but still looks forward to another day.
Each of her subjects has huge hands, presumably deliberately out of proportion to convey enormous strength.
The exhibit is sponsored by the college's Women's Institute, which has scheduled a reception for the artists from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday at the Pascal Center. Linden and Bergland will discuss their work at 7 p.m.
Pub Date: 3/14/99