Wellfleet Adult Community Center
Monthly exhibit of Outer Cape Contemporary Artists
July - Phyllis Ewen
On exhibit: July 6 - August 1
Opening Reception: July 6, 4:00 - 6:00 PM
Curated by Robert Rindler
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
In my work, I explore how our imagination and memories interact with the natural world. The movement of the earth’s surface has been a source of inspiration and imagery for more than a decade. The surface of the earth has many forces that affect it.
In 3-dimensional reliefs, I invite viewers to imagine themselves within the seascape above and below the surface of the water. In topographical waterscapes such as The Sea is Boiling and Polar Melt I scanned charts and weather maps, altered them in Photoshop, and printed them. Then they are reassembled to form imagined waterscapes that highlight the changing nature of our seas; rising waters and melting glaciers – the effects of anthropogenic global warming. Although maps imply a viewer looking down at the landscape, I hope that the dimensional qualities of my images allow us imagine ourselves within it; to inhabit the seas as another way of understanding.
In AMBIENT FIELD, I use maps of the ocean floor to suggest the slower-acting forces of deep time. The depth and texture are both actual and an illusion. The layers of the installation are attached with magnets, reflecting the magnetic fields in the earth’s tectonic plates.
ARTIST’S BIO:
Phyllis Ewen lives in Massachusetts, with studios in Somerville and Wellfleet. She is a member of the Kingston Gallery in Boston where she just had another one-person show, INUNDATION in May, 2025 and also at the AIR Gallery in Brooklyn that was well received and reviewed.
Her art is in public collections, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the DeCordova Museum, the Boston Public Library, Harvard University, the Reykjanes Museum of Art, and numerous corporate and private collections.
Ewen’s work has been shown widely. In 2017, her work was in a 3-artist exhibit at the Reykjanes Museum of Art in Iceland, Við Sjónarrönd/Above And Below The Horizon, a two-person show, Imprint, in York Maine, and a solo, Land and Water, at the Lesley University Spotlight Gallery.