Thursday, March 28, 2024

‘Bee Hope and Sea Change’, fine art exhibition benefits clean oceans and pollinators

Mulvenna - Untitled Landscape
Mulvenna – Untitled Landscape (Courtesy of Joel Finsel)

WILMINGTON — Darren Mulvenna, a well-known Wilmington artist and the curator of the Caprice Bistro Gallery (where he also tends bar), will host the opening reception for an exhibition of new paintings called “Bee Hope and Sea Change” on Thursday March 16, from 7-10 p.m. at 10 Market St.

“We live in environmentally challenging times,” Mulvenna said. “Luna moths would fly around my house when I was a kid, but they don’t show up any more. I wanted to find a way to educate the public and try to raise money to help.”

Mulvenna - Untitled Seascape (Courtesy: Darren Mulvenna)
Mulvenna – Untitled Seascape (Courtesy: Joel Finsel)

Mulvenna will be donating 20 percent of the proceeds to non-profit organizations, including Pollinator Partnership (www.pollinator.org) and the Plastic Ocean Project (www.plasticoceanproject.org).

“Pollinators, like butterflies and bees, play an essential role in the production of our food. And the Plastic Ocean Project works hard to clean up our seascapes and spread awareness about the massive amount of plastic waste that is literally choking the life out of the our oceans,” Mulvenna said.

Mulvenna and his business partner, Andrea Hammond, founded a company in 2013 called Mimicri, which creates butterfly-themed jewelry. Some of those items will also be featured in this show. Their jewelry is sold in many boutiques in the area.

“The patterns of moths and butterflies are just amazing,” Mulvenna explained. “But also, as pollinators, they are crucial for human survival. It’s difficult not to be influenced by nature and the advancement of one of the biggest extinction periods the Earth has ever seen.”

“Bee Hope and Sea Change” will also feature a smaller number of works by Lauren Lassiter and Aundi Wilson. Lauren will have a macrame wall piece that depicts the migration pattern and decline in Monarch butterflies. Aundi will showcase her ceramic flower wall-hangings.

The exhibition will last through May, 2017.

About Mulvenna’s work:
Mulvenna’s work embraces the patterns of Nature. Layers of paint and imagery emerge and recede, darken, glow from within and intensify, push and fade. His process searches out harmony between the subjects and their environments. The paintings seem to exist comfortably into their frames to then push with pulse back out into something new. His surreal landscapes are slightly abstracted, moving and dancing with dream-like images. One recognizes the living scenes, whether swimming in an ebbing aquatic light, or spying a classical dancer juxtaposed in a brackish chiaroscuro. The saturation of life in the vibrant palette and the easy imagery, with figures flying playfully across, is life affirming and derived from his searching for something universal, with glimpses of beauty that elevate.

-Content provided by Joel Finsel

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