The color of memory
November 3-26, 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday November 4, 2023 2-5PM Gallery Hours: Fridays 6-8PM, Saturdays, 12-5PM, Sundays 12-5PM
The Color of Memory brings the work of Marsha Nouritza Odabashian and Jennifer Liston Munson together in conversation to explore the notion of color as a system for seeing memory. Contemporaries of the MFA program at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Nouritza Odabashian and Liston Munson each engage color to permeate remembrance. Dripping, floating blues, pinks, yellows conjure time and place to tell intimate stories that explore historical and personal loss.
Nouritza Odabashian draws from imagery from European fairy tales and Medieval Armenian manuscripts to layer thick frosting-like color onto wooden sticks that connect her narratives from the wall to the floor. Her childhood memories of unspoken ancestral trauma from the Armenian Genocide are not immediately apparent—saccharin colors draw the viewer in to reveal complicated, sinister forms resting precariously along the sculptural edge.
Liston Munson buries abstract photos captured from abandoned rooms in colorized resin blocks to capture fleeting moments in time, as if to hold them in translucent amber to be rediscovered by looking through thick lenses as the images themselves look back out. Her object-like paintings draw viewers in through vivid color relationships, obscured textures, patterns, and imagery buried beneath surfaces to articulate places as silent witnesses to history suspended in time.
Together, Marsha Nouritza Odabashian and Jennifer Liston Munson make material the accumulation of time through color and form to conjure the intensity of our shared contemporary experience. As Sebastian Smee reminds us, “Color… is so much more than a merchandising tool, a marker of gender differences, a source of Instagram effects. Color is an inducement to wonder”.
Born and raised in the Boston area, Odabashian studied drawing, painting and art history at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, the Art Students’ League in New York, and Massachusetts College of Art. She received a BA in Art from the University of New Orleans and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University
Her work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions at galleries and museums in New England, New York, California, Louisiana, and Armenia, including The Armenian Museum of America in Watertown, the Danforth Museum, Galatea Fine Art, Tufts University Gallery and The Art Gallery at Stockton University in New Jersey. She was interviewed on New Jersey PBS in State of the Arts. Odabashian has also exhibited twice in Armenia. Selected publications, which have reviewed her work, include ArtScope, Art New England, the Boston Globe, Boston Art Review, the Armenian Weekly, and the Mirror Spectator.
Instagram: mnodabashian
Jennifer Liston Munson is a Boston area artist who was born in New York and grew up in Los Angeles, CA. She received an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, and a BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Jennifer studied painting at Loughborough College of Art and
Design in England. She received a Traveling Scholar Fellowship and showed her work at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Jennifer teaches at the SMFA at Tufts University and has an exhibition design practice that focuses on placemaking for historic and contemporary art objects. Her work is s held in corporate and private collections and is currently represented by curator Beth Kantrowitz at bk projects, as well as the Kingston Gallery in Boston.
Instagram: jlmunson28
