BLACKEST LIGHT
the multi-media art of scott cahaly
October 15 – November 30
Artist Reception: Friday November 20, 2009, 6-8 pm
1403 Massachusetts Avenue
781-862-6040
Scott Cahaly: “I am a Lexington native who never made any art until I entered the University of Vermont. As a student there in the mid-nineties, I saw a Picasso exhibit at UVM’s Fleming Museum. This is my earliest memory about art. I just kept going back to that show over and over again, absorbing its artistic inspiration and energy. Today, my modest hope for Blackest Light is that an Art Span student finds his or her way into the gallery, sits on the bench or relaxes on the floor, and absorbs some of the creative energy that I’ve poured into these works in stone, paint, charcoal, and photograph.
"I am both a sculptor and a painter. Even when I paint, I feel that I am dealing with sculptural form. When I tone down color and allow it to fade to black, I’m left alone with form and space, whether I’m working in two dimensions or three. I begin each new work with an open mind and a hopeful heart; no piece is ever planned at the outset.
"Blackest Light is an intimate show that includes work from my earliest art-making days to the present. The common thread among these pieces is their darkness. Yet within each of these dark works, there is light. In some cases, the light is literal, represented by lighter paints. In other cases, the light is provided “off-stage” by the flash of the camera, or is expressed only metaphorically within the content of the piece.
"Two charcoal drawings date back to the mid-nineties and have never before been exhibited; even then, when I was just starting to make art, I took charcoal to white paper and carved away the white space to create figures. At the time, this process was utterly mysterious and completely inspiring to me; I had no conscious idea of where this visual information was coming from. These pieces, although primitive, are filled with visionary figures that emerged unbidden out of my creative subconscious, foreshadowing the reductive process and imagery that were to become hallmarks of the next thirteen years of my sculpture and painting. Lastly, the show also includes a Paul Weiner photograph, taken using a flash in my Somerville studio, of me and a large marble statue I carved by hand from a 5000 pound block of marble.
