Michelle Lougee: Souvenirs and Castaways

Michelle Lougee’s solo exhibition Souvenirs and Castaways delves deeply into the duality of plastic—a material the artist finds at once both horrifying and beguiling. Focusing on the ever-present, overused, essential yet disposable, life-saving, and life-threatening material, the exhibition features a diverse collection of poetic works examining the relationships between humans, plastic, and nature in the face of a changing environment.

The fetish-like Souvenirs series are fashioned of post-consumer blister packages encapsulating natural objects such as feathers, lichen, shells, and pinecones. Onesies, an installation featuring industrial shrink-wrap, explores the ghostly, ethereal, ice-like quality of this mesmerizing material. Another series presents photographs literally viewed through the distorting lens of plastic bottles.

These products of the artist’s discriminate collecting, sorting, observation and transformation of accumulated plastic elements are obsessive, magical, and dystopian. Lougee beckons us to reflect on our exuberant consumption and consider the massive scale of plastic pollution and its devastating impact on the natural world.

In 2022 Michelle Lougee completed a large-scale public art project in collaboration with Cecily Miller at MassAudubon’s Magazine Beach Nature Center in Cambridge, MA. She teaches at Lesley University College of Art and Design. Lougee resides with her family in Cambridge, MA and maintains a studio at Vernon Street Studios in Somerville, MA.

Michelle Lougee: Souvenirs and Castaways runs concurrently with Carrie Crane: Geometry Lessons.

All events are free and open to the public.

Artist Talks and Reception with Carrie Crane

and moderated by Mary Tinti, art historian

and curator

June 24, 2–5pm with talks beginning at 3pm

SoWa First Friday Reception

July 7, 5–8:30pm

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