New Directions highlights work by Points of View Artist Carolyn Judson and 4 guest artists.  Nan Moran, Cathy Bloom, Susan Perrine, and Harold Roberts join Carolyn in exhibiting a wide variety of 2- and 3-dimensional art.

This section presents work by Cathy Bloom and Nan Moran who have both studied clay sculpture with Carolyn Judson, learning how to form objects from clay and then glaze and fire the results.  Cathy has also begun to explore works on paper by making block prints, some of which she later cuts, combines, and folds to create a 3-dimensional impact.  

Nan Moran says that her work makes clay pictures of objects and scenes.  She likes using the flexibility of clay to shift between 2 dimensions and 3 dimensions and also to vary the scale or point of view within each frame to add content and context.  Her tiles often depict animals or plants.  Although each tiles is made to hang on a wall, the subject often pops out away from it, giving the tile a sense of reality, motion and engagement. 

Cathy Bloom describes her connection with art and nature as one that leaves her with the question “What next?”  She says:  “There are things I see in nature that I interpret in my own way.  They feed my imagination and get me reaching for the art materials.  While exploring an acre of field where a house and barn had burned, I’ve seen the delightful, the mystifying, and a few things that made me uneasy."

"The other day I found some cattails growing deep within the basement foundation of the burnt barn where the ground is soggy even during drought. On a stem nearby sat several large grasshoppers keeping each other company. I approached quietly but on closer inspection they had vacated.  Only their exoskeletons remained in conversation. In bright sun, a colony of mutated evening primrose with flattened, five inch wide stems makes me wonder ‘What next?’   Then I see my first hummingbird moths, their wings so clear in places that I can see the beebalm flowers right through them, and I’m in love.”

Cathy is a member of Running With Scissors Artist Studios in Portland, Maine and the Maine Crafts Association.  Her work can be seen on her website http://www.cathybloom.com/.