It was Evening all Afternoon; Cynthia MacCollum
September 7 - October 19, 2024

Reception with the Artist
Saturday, September 7, 5-7pm
Walk+Talk with the Artist
Sunday Sept 22, 2-3pm

It Was Evening All Afternoon documents the six hundred and twenty-five species listed as Endangered, Threatened or Special Concern in the state of CT. Researching forgotten and unknown species is MacCollum’s way to honor the at-risk diversity and unseen beauty, while making visible the effects of habitat loss and climate change at a granular level. She researches each species, paints a symbolic representation, and creates a system for visualizing the data.

This exhibit at MAPSpace is both call to action and elegy. The installation represents the different classifications of endangered, threatened and special concern species for the state of Connecticut. These include Plants, Insects, Invertebrates, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds, Fish and Mammals. Each species is labeled with both common and Latin names; their conservation status is visible through a system designed by the artist for each species. An Encyclopedia of Extirpation highlights the one hundred and eight species considered locally extinct.

Cynthia MacCollum: Artist Statement

I am a record keeper. I track the passage of time, the migration of birds, the decline of native species, and the blooming of spring ephemerals. Painting is how I document and adore the specific natural spaces I inhabit. Adopting a schematic approach allows me to see closely and experience intimately while keeping my romantic tendency and solistalgic grief at bay.

Currently I am documenting the 625 species listed as Endangered, Threatened or Special Concern in Connecticut. I research each species and paint a symbolic representation; each taxonomic classification has a different method of representation. Plant species are represented by painted watercolor strips, while amphibians are represented by small paintings suspended in liquid-filled specimen jars. Learning the names of forgotten species is my way to honor and make visible the beauty, diversity and wonder that is unseen and at risk.

As a child I routinely visited the plants around my yard and in the forest. Nowadays I make visits to the Nature Preserve near my home to find the skunk cabbage as it pushes up through melting ice, the unfolding May Apples and unfurling Ferns, the new pink Maple leaves. The spring ephemerals excite me the most until the meadows are filled with Joe-Pye Weed, Ironweed, and Pods of Milkweed.

Born from my walks to the New Canaan Nature Center, recent rules-based projects represent my intense desire to deeply connect with the natural world. The impossibility of an unmediated experience of nature, and my passionate need to have one, compels me to spend time enmeshed here, noticing, observing, and absorbing. The resulting work is my attempt to translate my lived experience, and an acknowledgement of the impossibility to completely share the ineffable, almost sacred experience of nature.

Bio:

Cynthia MacCollum is a painter, printmaker, and photographer who lives and works in New Canaan, CT. Her work has been shown at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, NY; the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, CT; Elisa Contemporary Art, NY; First Street Gallery in New York; The Kellogg Gallery at Cal Poly Pomona, Blue Print Gallery in Dallas, Panopticon Gallery in Boston, and internationally in Cadaques, Spain, the UK, France and Hong Kong. In 2013 Cynthia’s work was selected by curator Donald Kuspit, one of 32 pieces out of thousands of submissions, to be part of the First Street Gallery National Juried Exhibit in New York City.

MacCollum is a long time artist in The Crit Lab community; a member of New Canaan’s Silvermine Guild, the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, and Odetta Digital. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis with a major in Art History and a minor in Fine Art, she has continued her studies at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking, and through monthly critiques with the CritLab. Artist Residencies for three summers, at the Skopelos Foundation for the Arts in Skopelos, Greece, have deepened MacCollum’s interest in the intersection of nature and art, and of painting, printmaking, and alternative processes. In addition to private collections, her work can be found in the Fine Art Collection of the Montefiore Health System and Memorial Sloane Kettering.