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UID:460@thelavacenter.org
DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20230708T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20230708T150000
DTSTAMP:20230705T143225Z
URL:https://thelavacenter.org/events/thomas-ratte-exhibit-opening-receptio
 n/
SUMMARY:Thomas Ratté exhibit opening reception
DESCRIPTION:Thomas Ratté did his undergraduate work at Greenfield Communit
 y College and UMass\, Amherst. He works with several mediums\, painting\, 
 pencil\, watercolor\, and photography.\n\nThis show will consist of severa
 l mediums and visual experiences.\n\nartist statement:\n\nMy work is a res
 ponse to materials\, rather than image. In this contemporary culture we un
 dergo a constant media bombardment of images. Largely propaganda masquerad
 ing as advertising to convince us of some way we should think or feel to f
 it into some idea of who we think we want you to think we are. I am more i
 nterested in the chaos of the fractal universe unfolding around us. I reve
 l in the accidental images found in wood grain or swirling smoke or wind b
 lown sand or erosion. The way lichen grows or how a stain looks like a fac
 e. Or look in the cloud… a bunny or is it a whale? Yes. For the most par
 t my visual art is more akin to the psychedelic experience than anything e
 lse. It’s escapist in a sense and yet immersive. I have worked more with
  how the materials move and shift and trying to figure out when to stop mo
 re so than trying to get somewhere. I’ve recently begun filling in my pr
 ints with the characters I find. Historically I have left them open so tha
 t they acted as more of a Rorschach ink blot test. These new pieces are fa
 irly playful and were done in lockdown.\n\nIn April of 2020 I was incarcer
 ated in NH for drug possession so I spent lockdown in lockdown. Ironic? Pe
 rhaps. I spent the next 16 months isolating and making art like so many of
  us all over the world. Due to the limited access to materials I began tea
 ring the drawing paper into smaller and smaller pieces to be able to make 
 more work. In the end I made nearly a thousand very small pieces in a vari
 ety of different styles.\n\nMost of these pieces were done by blowing the 
 ink from a ballpoint pen onto snack wrappers that I would wrinkle and pres
 s into the paper. The results varied widely based on the materials used.
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://thelavacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/202
 3/07/Thomas-Ratte-23-07-fb.jpg
CATEGORIES:Special Events
LOCATION:324 Main Street\, Greenfield\, MA\, 324 Main Street\, Greenfield\,
  MA\, 01301\, United States
X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=324 Main Street\, Greenfiel
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