New Exhibit “Borrowed Light” Opens in the RAC Gallery

“Borrowed Light,” a new exhibition by Greenfield artist Anna Hepler P’23 has opened at The Gallery at the Rhodes Arts Center. Hepler, a multimedia artist with a background in printmaking, recently completed a residency at Dartmouth College. Her work in this exhibition explores what she calls the “awesome fragility” of a tension she carefully crafts between organization and chaos.  

Hepler says she values “embarrassment, blunder, uncertainty, and fragility,” as agents in her process. 

Hepler’s sculptures, prints, ceramics, and photographs focus on patterns and linear forms that shift unexpectedly and weave playfully in and out of geometric orderliness. She works with a broad range of materials, including clay, cardboard, wire, wood, and cloth, and she frequently repurposes materials. 

In “Shadow Study (Shard),” a broken ceramic work is transformed into a photograph that could be interpreted as a painting or a print. In “Cataract,” Helpler has glued corrugated cardboard, sliced into wafer-thin strips, into a body-sized arch that is suspended away from the wall. The sculpture has the presence of a flowing fabric. Seemingly weightless, its segmented interior strips conjure the fibrous structure of cacti skeletons or plant cells. 

These kinds of compelling ambiguities and playful metamorphoses are evident throughout “Borrowed Light.” Hepler’s clever and experimental approaches to the works defy expectations, inviting the viewer to look closely and linger in the liminal spaces she has created. 

“Borrowed Light” is on view through Jan. 19, 2024. The Gallery is open to the public Monday to Friday, from 8 am to 8 pm, and Sunday from 1 to 5 pm.