NATHALIE FERRIER - oolite
NATHALIE FERRIER
oolite
July 4 - 20
artists reception: Sunday, July 5, 6–8pm
artist talk with Joerg Dressler:Thursday, July 9, 6pm.
Farm Projects is pleased to present Oolite, an exhibition of new paintings by Nathalie Ferrier. The show opens with a reception on Sunday, July 5 from 6–8pm, and will be accompanied by an artist talk with Joerg Dressler on Thursday, July 9 at 6pm.
The exhibition’s title refers to the ancient limestone bedrock extending from Miami Beach through the Everglades. This oolite layer, built up over eons of compression and erosion, is teeming with the traces of organisms millions of years old. As the artist describes, it is “a porous sponge that allows the sea to breathe.” Inspired by this living stone, Ferrier works on hide, sandpaper, dropcloth, and canvas to create painted surfaces that similarly absorb, resist, and record.
Ferrier describes her work as "tactiles for the eyes." Across her surfaces, contour lines ripple outward from dense centers. In some works, fluid paint spreads and pools; in others, tight concentric lines accumulate in close repetition. Throughout, the supports are active participants: hide and dropcloth have their own texture, weight, and give, and Ferrier's marks work in direct relation to these properties.
The work emerges from Ferrier's years migrating between Cape Cod and South Beach, two barrier landscapes shaped by water, sand, and the constant pressure of erosion. However, the geology of Miami, and the layered human history built upon it, forms the emotional core of the exhibition. Ferrier's paintings are, in her words, a tribute to a landscape that is more water than rock: an attempt to hold, in paint and hide and sand, a history that is anything but static.
About the Artist Nathalie Ferrier was born in France and has lived in Truro, Cape Cod since 1999. She studied at the École de Haute Couture in Paris and worked for a decade as a fashion designer before receiving her MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2007. She is currently Director and Curator of the Higgins Art Gallery and teaches fiber arts at Cape Cod Community College.