A Delicate Balance

Beacon Gallery is pleased to present A Delicate Balance, a group show featuring artists Domenic Esposito, Nicci Sevier-Vuyk and Sharon Whitham, which opens on Friday, June 3 and runs until Sunday, July 17, 2022. The show focuses on the ongoing challenges that everyone faces – mentally, emotionally and even physically – especially in such difficult or uncertain times as we have been experiencing, and seeks to highlight the commonality in this struggle.

The works to be showcased are composed in three different media with very diverse approaches. Yet, together, these two and three-dimensional works and installations create a shared strength in message, representing the layers and aspects which may be found within all of us in shaping the reality of our human fragility.

“Our lives and how we project ourselves are often a balancing act. On the outside it may be all flowers, bright colors and sweetness, but our internal reality may be a very different story,” notes curator and gallery owner Christine O’Donnell.  “In these difficult times, our mental health has never felt more vulnerable or precarious, and as such, A Delicate Balance serves to recognize and express the reality, truth and hope in this individual and collective struggle and hopefully encourage a sense of normalcy.”

Domenic Esposito’s Listen, a triptych featuring his iconic hooded figure in bronze, facing a series of individuals in three gothic panels, is evocative of current events. Esposito is an artist and social activist whose work reflects upon our innermost selves, the turmoil and struggle often experienced internally. Through both his series of hooded figures and his various allusions to addiction, Esposito plumbs the depths of human desperation and fragility, while underscoring the aspect of suffering.

On the other end of the spectrum, Nicci Sevier-Vuyk’s paintings and Sharon Whitham’s monoprints each represent the ways in which we seek to cover up these darker moments. Always a balancing act, rocks are assembled in unpredictable manners, just barely balanced on each other in a most precarious fashion. The cool, relaxing colors sit in opposition to the tension such assemblages represent in their unnatural arrangement. With a human hand perhaps just out of sight, one is left to wonder about the metaphorical balancing act, depicted in varying bursts of color. These flashes of beauty direct our attention not only to what is attractive in our own existences, but also to the overwhelming number of pieces that are anything but.

Beacon Gallery has organized this unique and meaningful collection of work, which is meant to inspire self-reflection — prompting audiences to look inward at their own vulnerabilities and importantly, encourage a willingness to recognize with empathy how much of our private inner worlds we actually share with others.

About the Artists
Domenic Esposito is a Massachusetts based artist and social activist. A graduate of Northeastern University, he was also trained in art from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Stonybrook Fine Arts, Artist Asylum and Prospect Hill Forge, where he developed his metalwork skills. In 2018, he achieved national attention through the massive opioid spoon sculptures he placed on the doorsteps of the FDA and major pharmaceutical giants, and founded the Opioid Spoon Project, a 501(c)(3) to serve as a solution-based platform in addressing the opioid crisis.

Domenic’s work includes sculptures, paintings, commissions and public art installations, and has been privately collected and exhibited in a range of galleries and art fairs across the U.S., including Artexpo New York, Canvas Fine Arts, Boston; Piano Craft Gallery, Boston where he recently launched a successful solo exhibition, Vox Clamantis; Insight Artspace, NY; Scope, NYC; Art Palm Beach; and SOFA Chicago Art Fair, among others. To learn more follow on Facebook and Instagram.

Nicci Sevier-Vuyk is an American artist known for her colorful, realistic acrylic paintings of iconic objects in American culture. Her work is fueled by her interest in the conflict between appearance, its meaning in culture, and substance. The stereotypes of beauty and playful sense of irony are main themes in her paintings. Nicci has painted throughout her life and after a career as a pediatric nurse practitioner she began her art practice full-time. She has attended The Glassell School of Art in Houston, but is, for the most part, a self-taught artist. Nicci has had two solo exhibitions and has been included in many juried exhibitions. She has twice been featured on The Jealous Curator’s blog. Born in northern California, Nicci creates her work and has made her home in Southborough, Massachusetts.

Nicci shares: “My work is a reflection of the stereotypes surrounding beauty and appearance. The chrysanthemum portraits I create are an exploration of the fascinating beauty that lies outside the boundaries of society’s definition of what is desirable. The delight of asymmetry, irregular form, and playful use of color create an unexpected floral painting. The minimalist and representational style of my work encourages an iconic feeling about the chrysanthemum, further magnifying what it means to us as individuals and as a society.” To learn more follow on Facebook and Instagram.

Sharon Whitham is a printmaker and mixed-media artist. She spends part of each year working out of her studio in the Boston area, living on an island off the coast of Maine, and creating art in Mexico. Her work is inspired by both nature and culture, focused on themes of balance, loss and change, and our connections to each other and the natural world. She is particularly interested in the idea of balance in its many forms: physical; spiritual; cultural; juggling the demands of contemporary life; and navigating a path through a very complex world. Her work is also influenced by the current crises around immigration, climate change, tolerance, equality, and justice. 

Sharon is inspired by the beauty, resilience and changes that occur in the natural world, and most especially the paradox of permanence/impermanence. She is drawn to the organic shapes, patterns and colors in nature, particularly rocks, feathers, leaves and water. Much of her work uses the imagery of cairns, which are balanced mounds of stones, typically built by fellow travelers from rocks found in the landscape. They are carefully placed and balanced to mark a trail or path to help guide others. Sharon sees cairns as a way to connect to nature, history and those that have traveled before us in life. To learn more follow on Facebook and Instagram.