Mireille Clapp Review
Mad River Valley Arts presents The Retrospective of Mireille Clapp, “Crossing the Divide, 1995-2017,” till March 15, this calendar year.



For Clapp, the ‘divide’ to cross was concerning science and artwork. She was an innovator with substance and a revolutionary advocate for women’s legal rights in the field of sciences.

Clapp acquired her PhD in materials science and engineering at MIT. In 1985 she was the 1st woman tenured professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at UMass Amherst in 1985, 100 a long time immediately after the engineering school started out. Her management in this regard has subsequently impressed women of all ages to develop into faculty in the sciences. She studied sculpture at UMass, Mass University of Art, and the Museum College in Boston. She showed her function all about New England and has non-public collections all over the U.S. and in Canada, China, France, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland.

Irrespective of becoming qualified as a scientist, Clapp was an artist at coronary heart. She observed the parallels between the scientific and artistic system as 1 of inquiry, experimentation, and investigate. For her the divide concerning science and artwork was an apparent possibility to explore and thrust with her possess visual vocabulary.

“Grecian Sunset, 1998” is an acrylic painting on canvas. Below one particular sees the merging of conscious and unconscious worlds an inside landscape of shade and shape floating seamlessly in weird choreography.

Resources ended up the core of Clapp’s follow. They motivated her tips, which applications to use and creating as an exercise, which sometimes turned the primacy over the object alone.

At the Mad River Valley Arts Gallery folks can see her vast display of supplies from wood, stone, sea glass and coral juxtaposed to person-created use of metals, aluminum, copper, recycled filters and glass, once in a while in harmony and generally in opposition. The viewer can see that opposite forces in material or strategy can co-exist and be held jointly for even further comprehension. All of her get the job done is vivid and colourful. Coloration by no means escaped her palette. The all-natural wood towards challenging metal is a warm invitation to understand beauty and craft with industrial supplies.


Arthur Dove Redux, 2000: Copper, metal, coral, paint.

Mireille suffered from horrible migraines. This didn’t quit her from earning, in fact they were a resource of innovation. The illusions of migraine auras are visible in the pronounced serrated edges or irregular traces obvious in the course of the assortment. She shared this situation with the artist Arthur Dove, an early American modernist. According to Phil Clapp, Mireille’s partner, “Mireille right away understood the kinship among Arthur Dove’s figurative things and those that she had arrived at independently. She usually utilized tough jagged edges as dramatic emphasis in her sculpture and honored that link of “fellow sufferer.” “Arthur Dove Redux” reveals the jagged toothy edge prominently.”

“Crossing the Divide” encourages you to explore your personal interpretations and this means. We never require a representational graphic to get it. We all know these components and shapes we know what motion and shade can evoke in us. Whichever split or split we locate ourselves in, the work of Mireille opens a likelihood to imagine that what is perceivably incompatible, or a clash of forces, acknowledging the rigidity initially is a wonderful minute of reduction in the direction of a new route ahead,” said Sam Talbot-Kelly, executive director at Mad River Valley Arts.


