The Great Silence by Lorrie Fredette at Cape Cod Museum of Art
The Great Silence, a sculpture created by Lorrie Fredette, will be on exhibition at the Cape Cod Museum of Art June 11 - September 25. This sculpture, a site-specific installation designed specifically for the museum’s Bank of America/Hunter Gallery, made of beeswax, tree resin, muslin, brass, steel and nylon line, will be suspended from the beams in the gallery. There will be a Gallery Talk by Lorrie Fredette, Sunday, July 31, 2 pm, free with paid museum admission; admission is $8, free for members of CCMA. Fredette’s work is inspired by medical sciences. She is particularly interested in the way that information is collected and passed on. Fredette says of her work: Like tales of big fish, it is often distorted and misrepresented in the telling. My installation, The Great Silence began with the study of the smallpox virus, an epidemic of which is presumed to have killed 75 percent of the original residents of Cape Cod between 1614 and 1617. With smallpox as my host, I set out to uncover the story around this epidemic, and the altered memories associated with it through years of re-telling the story. Thus, The Great Silence is the most current factual version of a grossly eroded memory and its progression.” Fredette creates site-specific installations that comment on the distortion of memory and experience. She employs beauty, dimension and place as part of a process of alteration. Her work has been shown in exhibitions at Mass MoCA (Williamstown, MA), Gallery Ehva (Provincetown, MA) and the University of Virginia (Charlottesville). Awards include MARK 09 and a Strategic Opportunity Grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2010 and 2007 respectively). Recently, she was awarded and attended a residency at Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY. Fredette earned a BFA in sculpture from the Herron School of Art/Indiana University. Born and raised in Burlington, MA, a very frequent visitor to Cape Cod, she now lives and works in New York’s Hudson Valley. Cape Cod Museum of Art, the regional art museum of Cape Cod, the Islands and Southeastern Massachusetts, is located off Route 6A, 60 Hope Lane, on the grounds of Cape Cod Center for the Arts, Dennis. Admission: $8, free for ages 18 and younger and museum members. Gallery hours Memorial Day - Columbus Day: Monday – Saturday, 10 am – 5 pm; Thursday until 8 pm; and Sunday, noon – 5 pm. Information: 508-385-4477 or www.ccmoa.org.
