A Different Time, A Different Place

March 6 - April 24

This exhibition, A Different Time, A Different Place, features Connecticut artists Stanwyck Cromwell and Cora Marshall, and testifies to the importance of time and place in their work. Both artists draw inspiration from their African heritage and their origins in two different Americas, yet they reveal their connecting and diverging perspectives in distinctly different ways.

Mr. Cromwell has chosen paintings, drawings, and sculptures from various series, including his black-eyed peas series. Viewing his collective works as “an embodiment of all his experiences as a human being and a Guyanese-born artist living in America,” he pays tribute to his Caribbean/African roots and juxtaposes past and present in vibrant colors, symbols and metaphors such as black-eyed peas. He uses multiple overlays to create depth and imaginary mindscapes in works that are figurative, abstract, and surrealistic.

Dr. Marshall focuses on the past in order to understand the present. She delves into her African American and Native American ancestry in the explicit subject matter of her paintings. The mixed-media works in this exhibit are portraits from two related series, Runaways! Going, Going, Gone and To Be Sold, both of which were inspired by actual advertisements in 18th and 19th century newspapers. Dr. Marshall movingly portrays the humanity of enslaved people, who had only been represented as mere chattel. She challenges us to reflect on the importance of remembering our ancestors and what it means to be free.

Please join us in viewing this exhibition and in exploring the different perspectives that the artists reveal in their work as well as their profound connections derived from their shared ancestry. Ponder, too, the ways our own lives diverge and are connected to theirs through time and place.

Made possible in part by a grant from the George and Grace Long Foundation