Discover Sebastain Martorana and Cig Harvey

Subject Matters: Sebastian Martorana in Sculpture

Eating Flowers: Sensations of Cig Harvey

Ogunquit Museum of Art (Ogunquit, Maine)

Through October 31, 2019

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Unless you’re lucky enough to make it Ogunquit, Maine, in the next several weeks these two shows will have closed. More’s the pity, but here are two wonderful artists whose work may be unfamiliar to you. You should definitely check out their online portfolios and keep your eyes peeled in case their work shows up near you.

Sebastian Martorana (b. 1981) is an instructor at the Maryland Institute of Art. He works in various media and has won some important commissions in the greater Baltimore/Washington metro area. He is best known, though, for his marble sculptures. His commission work tends to be weighty in the way that sculpt-for-hire work tends to be, but the Ogunquit show captures him in a more playful mood.

These works fall into two categories. The first is whimsical, as in capturing Sesame Street characters Kermit the Frog and Sam the Eagle in stone. There is something about marbleizing each that endows them with ironic

dignity. 

It’s as if Sam is usurping the national bird for our national hearts, and Kermit’s drapery is suggestive of poking fun at past monuments of presidents posing as Roman nobles. You can’t look at these without both admiring them and chortling.

 

Perhaps more impressive, though, are works that take prosaic objects

such as a Teddy bear, a cushion, or a soiled towel and render them realistically—again in marble. I had a hard time looking away from the folds in the towel as I contemplated both the precision and degree of difficulty involved in executing it. It is at once ordinary and extraordinary.

It would be safe to say that I adored the photographs and poetry of Cig Harvey. She was born in Devonshire, England in 1973, but now lives in Rockport, Maine. Ms. Harvey is the real deal; she even has a Wikipedia page that highlights her diverse works and the various honors that have come her way. The eye-arching title of her show at Ogunquit, Eating Flowers, comes from the fact that part of her work for the museum involved helping it rethink its delightful sculpture garden. The inside display highlights images from three of her past portfolio/exhibition works, plus her merged photo/video projects, and a smattering of her evocative musings. 

Harvey’s photos have often drawn comparisons to Magritte. I wouldn’t call them that enigmatic, but she does evoke Magritte’s sense of the solitary. Some of her most striking images are of her daughters Jesse and Scout in isolation:  a pink coat against a high key beach bleeding into a fading ocean and sky; tussled hair and a rich blue velvet dress in a bank of snow. Be sure to check out her “motion” pictures, my favorite being that of a young girl staring out the window of a battered red pickup truck as a New England snowstorm swirls–a still image against moving flakes and a blank face that invites a thousand backstories. 

The greatest photographers use images to tell stories. What does one make of her frozen apples? Are they memento mori or reminders that those doomed globes are promises of spring’s renewal? How about a bagged spray of flowers lying upon a paint-strained table? Is the fading bouquet a grim reminder of endings, the raging of a soul insistent upon wringingbeauty from decay, or just a wondrously artful arrangement that signifieth nothing? You can attach as much or as little meaning as you wish from Harvey’s work and walk away stunned.

Rob Weir

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