Stitched Narratives,
by Maryellen Cahill
SIGNAGE, new paper sculptures
by X Bonnie Woods

September 7 – 28, 2024
Opening Reception: Sunday, September 8, 2-5 pm
Third Thursday Reception and artists’ talk:
Thursday, September 19, 6-9 pm

Atlantic Works Gallery’s September exhibition will consist of two side-by-side solo shows from two member artists, Maryellen Cahill and X Bonnie Woods.

The exhibition will open at the East Boston gallery on Saturday, September 7, 2024, with an opening reception at the gallery on Sunday, September 8, 2024 from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. There will be a Third Thursday reception with artists’ talks on September 19, 2024, from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. The show will close on Saturday, September 28, 2024.

Maryellen Cahill is a fiber artist in the Boston area working in the fashion industry with a love of textiles and color. Her show, Stitched Narratives, invites viewers to look into each piece and imagine their own story through the fabric, thread, and beads.  Her process begins with an idea, but she lets the piece evolve as she works through it. Most of Cahill’s work involves slow stitching and beading, which is a meditative and calming process.  The group of works being exhibited include a theme of ‘circles’ that run throughout many of the pieces with a play on forms and intersecting stitching that draws the viewer closer into the work. Mixed media in her work include fabric, paper, embroidery, beads, and found objects.

X Bonnie Woods is based in Boston and Berlin, Germany. Her works challenge traditional ideas about artistic materials and boundaries. She has exhibited her paintings and photos widely in the U.S. and Europe.

The solo exhibition SIGNAGE includes three new series that Woods completed in Berlin and Boston in 2023 -2024—Non-Stop, Traffic, and Bad Turns—in which Woods takes a new glimpse at signs that make us go one way or another, sometimes with humor, sometimes with horror.

Woods paints on folded printmaking paper with Sumi, a dense black Asian ink. Large-scale works done outdoors often incorporate rain or snow. Swiss crayons make bright color. Each painting is a single piece of paper, which takes on a leather-like permanence after many layers of ink wash, and which locks into its folded pattern. These new sculptural works explore and explode our notion of everyday, wordless signage.