Stephanie Cole - My Life in Pieces: Painting with Stuff

Stephanie Cole was born in Connecticut; she studied painting at California College of Arts and Crafts and later at the Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, CT. By the mid-1960s, Cole and her husband Jim had settled in Rockport where she taught art in the Rockport elementary school and raised their children. By the early 1980s, she was moving from painting into experimentation with elaborate mosaic-like sculptures that she calls her “memory sculptures.” Today, her sculptures each made of hundreds of pieces—everything from colored glass and ceramic shards to bits of clothing and old typewriter keys—fill her Rockport home and studio. Many are based on feminist and political themes others are autobiographical capturing the artist at ten year intervals throughout her life. Part of Cole’s intention has been to record history through her sculpture, her own personal story and the history of the world around her.

The exhibition will open on May 18 with a meet-the-artist reception from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.