Messages + Meditations: Two concurrent shows @ KLG

October 12th – November 12th, 2017: Kehler Liddell Gallery (KLG) presents photographer Roy Money’s, Clouds: A Temporary Matter and collage artist Brian Flinn’s, Message in a Bottle, with an opening reception on Saturday, October 21st, 3pm-6pm, and a closing reception and artist talk on Saturday, November 11th @ 3pm.

Brian Flinn states that the basis for his most recent body of work was the discovery of “a small cache of old bottles (c. 1920’s)” in his basement one month after his wife’s passing: “As I tried to reconcile the loss of the most important person in my life, I wanted to drop messages into each of these bottles and cast them over the chasm to reach her … the desire to communicate with the incommunicable.” Yet amidst expressions of impermanence and mourning, Flinn offers hope, stating the works also reflect “my hopes for all the wonders of the yet unknown.”

Simultaneously, Roy Money offers a meditation on the “sentinels above, energy systems governed by the same principles of chemistry and gravity as us down below.” Becoming now the subjects of his photographs, rather than merely background material, Money references numerous indigenous cultures who saw “the insentient world as an integral part of a vast spectrum of being.” Money states that is with similar sensibility that he “explores the myriad manifestations of clouds, as they seem emblematic of creation itself.”

Roy Money’s photographs are principally concerned with the natural world, in part to challenge cultural distinctions associated with the concept of nature. For him the camera is a way to widen the limits of perception and explore the porosity of boundaries between self and other. Money received his MFA in photography from the University of Delaware. His work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in CT, as well as in DE, NY, VT, Chicago, Atlanta and Nashville. His work is held in private collections worldwide.

Brian Flinn is an artist and educator whose work currently uses a variety of mixed and digital media. Trained as an illustrator, Flinn often employs multiple narratives and symbolism culled from art history and contemporary culture. He holds a BFA in Illustration (1990) and MS in Art Education (1995) from the University of Bridgeport and MFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts (1993). He is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Central Connecticut State University.