Bristol Art Museum opening Friday, October 30 at 7 pm

The"Decorata Project: A Dialogue with Nature", sponsored by the Bristol Art Museum, Saturday October 31st for three weeks until Sunday November 22nd, is an opportunity to see Joan Backes, Carpet Of Leaves, Wendy Wahl's Rebound: Mixed Editions and Paulette Carr, Earth Pendulums, three art installations that interpret life and nature. The opening reception for the exhibit will be on Friday, October 30th at 7:00 pm at the museum on the grounds of Linden Place, 500 Hope Street, Bristol. On Sunday, November 1st at 2 pm, the three artists will talk about their individual artwork. The Museum Hours are Tuesday-Sunday from 1-4 pm.

Paulette Carr, Director of Exhibitions for the Bristol Art Museum found the inspiration for the show in the word, "decorata", which is used to refer to the plant and animal kingdom and symbolizes nature. Joan Backes's Carpet of Leaves, brings the outside inside to the museum with leaves from different tree species along with the spectrum of colors from Spring through Fall. "Leaves have been used as a design motif for cloth carpets throughout history, "Backes states. Her other installation, "Cardboard Trees", are made from recycled boxes from every continent. The box material is a tree product and now the cardboard is returned to the tree.

Wendy Wahl's,"Rebound: Mixed Editions", challenges assumptions about our surroundings through the use of tactile text by using discarded encyclopedias as a building material. The books have been deconstructed and restructured to create a work that considers the associations between the tree of life and the tree of knowledge. Paulette Carr's, "Earth Pendulums", is an interactive installation that revisits the passage of time. "The pendulums are to be touched and gently pushed, just as we touch and move with the earth each day we are living", says Carr. "Patterns are traced in sand and vary with the force and length of the touch to the pendulum. The steel spheres that sound with each movement evoke the bells used through the centuries to mark celebrations."
For more information, www.bristolartmuseum.org