Opening Reception: Parallel Play: Painting & Photography

Parallel play is the term for two children absorbed in separate games side by side. It's a fitting name for the Cloister Gallery's summer exhibition, a two-person show by the husband-and-wife team of C. Ellen Hart and Jack Hart. For years they have shared the same life and the same subjects -- water, light, the bayou at their doorstep -- and turned them into two distinct bodies of work: her paintings and his photographs, made in parallel. What unites them is time, treated in opposite ways. Ellen slows it down. My work investigates the present moment in nature and in life, she writes. The aim is to slow time... Nothing in the process is swift. Jack catches it and holds it still: A picture stops time for that split second, he says, which lets him look again -- not only at what I thought I saw but also at what I didn't see. For all the talk of light and time, the Harts are plain about the point. Ellen and I make our art to put a smile on our faces, Jack says, and we hope to put a smile on your face. Join us for a reception with the artists on Thursday, July 30, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. All are welcome. Gallery Hours Monday - Friday, 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. Sunday, 8 a.m. - 3 p.m.