Pair of artists get wrapped up in new exhibit

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Northwind Art will present the exhibit “Entangled” in the Northwind Art Best Gallery, a show featuring new works from artists Lauren Boilini and Michelle Hagewood.

The show opens Thursday, Feb. 4 and continues through Sunday, March 28.

Boilini and Hagewood are longtime friends and peers. In “Entangled,” they explore world-building and the processes of formation in its dystopic, utopic, and indiscernible forms. 

Organizers of the show said many of the works were created during the pandemic, and the pieces manifest imagined trajectories that reflect on the entanglement of human activity and that which surrounds and supports it.

Boilini’s paintings visualize animal mating rituals, in large and small works of gouache and ink on paper.

“These paintings build on an ongoing narrative which imagines a fictional island comprised only of male species and the sequence of destructive events that follow,” Boilini explained.

Born and raised in Bloomington, Indiana, Boilini earned a bachelor’s degree in painting and art history at the Kansas City Art Institute in 2006. 

She was awarded a master’s in fine arts in 2008 from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland.

Boilini has served as an artist-in-residence at Canserrat in Spain, Jentel Arts in Wyoming, Soaring Gardens in Pennsylvania, the Studios of Key West, the Creative Alliance and School 33 Art Center in Baltimore, and as a Consortium Resident at the Studio Art Centers International in Florence. She was also invited as an artist-in-residence at the Burren College of Art in Ireland and received a full fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center in 2012.

Boilini has been on the faculty at Evergreen State College, Pacific Lutheran University and Cornish College of the Arts, as well as schools in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. area. 

A Seattle resident, she has had recent solo exhibitions in Tacoma, A-Gallery in Pioneer Square and BallardWorks, and through Shunpike Storefronts Project and Out of Sight.

Hagewood’s paintings and paper cuts are described as vignettes into a landscape that has morphed and formed itself in the wake of ancient life forms and human detritus. 

“The work centers the architecture of minerals, water, and plant life in an unfolding narrative that I have been developing for the past few years,” Hagewood noted. “I utilize a hybrid avatar for her own sensing and wandering in this world as a way to understand her relationship to it.” 

She was born in Nashville, Tennessee and is now based in Port Townsend. An artist, educator, and arts administrator, Hagewood currently directs the artist residency program at Centrum.

Hagewood completed her bachelor of fine arts at Maryland Institute College of Art and MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts.  A former artist-in-residence at the Creative Alliance, she has participated in a number of artist-run collectives such as Current Space and EyeSplice, and has nationally exhibited and published her paintings, drawings, and installations. 

Her studio practice is primarily driven by investigations of potential landscapes and architecture, using mediums that intersect with ink and drawing. 

The artists will be featured in an online Zoom event at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 11.

They will interview each other about their work and share the ways that sci-fi, theory, and personal experiences have informed their art.

They will also discuss their work in relation to the current climate and take questions from the audience.

The online event is free, but registration is required at NorthwindArt.org.

Also in February, Hagewood will lead an online workshop series called “Imagining in Ink: Acrylic Ink and Fantastical Landscapes” using her technical and conceptual approach to inspire student’s art making. 

The series starts Thursday, Feb. 18; learn more and register at NorthwindArt.org.

Northwind Art Best Gallery is at 701 Water St., Port Townsend. Exhibit hours are noon to 5 p.m. Thursday through Sunday.