Boston Art: Claire Van Vliet’s Pulp Paintings at Boston Athenaeum
Boston Art Review: Claire Van Vliet’s Pulp Paintings at the Boston Athenaeum
This exhibit of Vermont artist Claire Van Vliet’s paintings showcases her pioneering work in pulp painting and innovative book formats. Most of the paintings on display are created using pigmented paper pulp as a medium, so the pigment is embedded in the layers of pulp, rather than applied to the paper’s surface. The exhibit also includes 3D, sculptural pieces and handmade, collaborative books that typically feature poetry by well-known poets such as Denise Levertov and Hayden Carruth. The pulp paintings have the soft, luminous glow of watercolor paintings, with heightened atmospheric effects and depth of color. Van Vliet’s cloud paintings are particularly powerful. In writing about her choice of medium, she wrote: “I know of no other way of achieving the ‘now you see it, now you don’t’ subtlety in the transitions….The colors emanate and the fibers float.”
It is fitting that this exhibit is hosted by the Boston Athenaeum, one of the country’s oldest libraries, which has an extensive lending library as well as over 100,000 rare books and manuscripts. If you live in the Boston area, there are several docent-led tours of this wonderful little exhibit on their event calendar for October 2024. The exhibit runs through December 30th, 2024.