TO BE DETERMINED
Hugh Atkins & Jenna Lucente

November 1 - 28, 2018
Opening reception: November 2  |  5 - 9 PM, during Art Loop

Hugh Atkins
The figures in these pictures are in a state of imminence. They are about to be. Some look directly at the viewer, their expressions non-committal, almost wary, as if requiring the response that will allow them to become themselves. In one sense, the figures are questions that only the viewer can answer. The ones in masks or without faces are even more enigmatic, but they all need context, back-stories, a way to be. Of course, in a few weeks, months, years, the answers will be different and the relationships between the maker, the work, and the viewer will have changed.

Hugh Atkins is a visual artist whose lyrical work yields compositions typically forming mélanges of human forms, landscape, and intricate borders.

Jenna Lucente
Are the girls in the pictures headed somewhere or stoically accepting the status quo? Searching and lost? Or found but not wanting to be in that place? Whatever the truth, the future is to be determined.

The visual simplicity accentuates the harshness of the girls' environment. To us, they may seem almost nebulous, reaching tentatively toward a more reassuring reality than the one they presently experience. Of course, that perspective will change when we find ourselves on a rescue boat or in a stilt house.

Jenna Lucente is an artist and educator currently living in Delaware. She recently completed a public art commission that includes 28 glass windows for the above-ground Arthur Kill train station in Staten Island, New York. 

Elizabeth Denison Hatch Gallery