Reflected Bodies by Sharon Portelance

Artist list

Sharon Portelance

Our veins are like the roots and arms of a tree and our hearts like her trunk. Our circulatory system, like the large rivers and tributaries that carry water throughout the planet, transports life-sustaining blood throughout our bodies. Portelance muses.
To create these works, she combines magnified imagery from the body’s interior landscape and those from the natural world, specifically photographs she takes during her hikes and paddles in Maine. Portelance prints the enlarged images on aluminum, and in some pieces, employs mirrors with etched images. The mirror supplies additional layers of reflection: of parts of the piece, the outside world, and an altered image of the viewers back to themselves. The intricately cut silver, also naturally reflective, provides both a shield and a filter for the images within. Explains the artist: By pairing these two sources, the human body and nature, my hope is to provide the wearer an opportunity to
pause and reflect on their own body and its relationship with the natural world.

Sharon Portelance received her BFA in Jewelry and Silversmithing in 1982 from the Portland School of Art (now Maine College of Art & Design) and her MFA from the State University of
New York at New Paltz in 1992. In 1999, she returned to Portland to teach at the Maine College of Art & Design where she continues to serve as Chair of the Metalsmithing and
Jewelry Department. Portelance has exhibited nationally and internationally, and her work is in the collections of The Tacoma Art Museum in Washington, New Mexico State University
Museum in Las Cruces, The Samuel Dorskey Museum in New Paltz, and the Okresni Muzeum Ceskeho raje in Turnov, Czech Republic.

The show opens on Saturday, April 15th with a reception to meet the artist from 12 – 4 pm.

The exhibition is open during gallery hours: Monday through Saturday 11 am – 5 pm or by appointment.