ArtWall Exhibition
The David M. Hunt Library is pleased to announce DRIFTLINES, a dual exhibition featuring new works by painter Heather Neilson and photographer Babs Perkins that explores the meditative connections between memory, place, premonition, and afterthought. The two artists are friends and are local to the Northwest Corner of Connecticut with studios at Whiting Mills in Winsted. DRIFTLINES will open with a reception for the artists at the library on Saturday, August 16, 5-7PM. An artist’s talk featuring the two artists in conversation is scheduled for Thursday, September 4 at 5:30PM. The exhibition will be on display through Friday, September 12, and is free and open to the public.
Heather Neilson’s richly textured paintings explore inner and outer landscapes, drawing from memory and the passage of time. Rooted in the search for resonance and a sense of home, she uses color, texture, and form to evoke balance while also holding space for tension, change, and ambiguity. These shifting environments echo the internal terrain she continues to explore—cycles of beginnings, change, renewal, and the search for equilibrium. Neilson studied at the Art Students League of New York and has trained with several master artists, continuously evolving her process through exploration and experimentation. Before pursuing art full-time, she worked professionally in marketing and holds a B.A. in Communications from Rutgers University—experience that continues to inform her approach to creative practice and teaching.
In dialogue with Neilson’s paintings, Babs Perkins’s hypnotic photographic compositions in DRIFTLINES evoke the time, tone, color and hue of the coastal shoreline. They are the third series in the artist’s larger body of work, Moving Landscapes/In Limine. ‘In Limine’ means ‘on the threshold’ and her images are just that. They are on the threshold of time (day or night) and place (the edge of the continent/ country/land/sea). They are also on the threshold of what we think we know as a photograph. Perkins said, “I am interested in de-commodifying the “the photograph” and returning a sense of materiality to the world of digital photography, aiming less for duplicatable perfection and more for an undeniable sense of being created by hand. Her work, whether documentary or fine art, explores the ideas of context and memory and the relationship to place. Creating work in both of these visual disciplines is essential to her practice.
The public is warmly invited to attend the opening reception of DRIFTLINES on Saturday August 16, 5-7PM, to meet the artists and engage with their work. Refreshments will be served. All sales will benefit both the artists and the library.
In addition, Neilson and Perkins will have an art talk featuring a conversation between the two artists on Thursday September 4 at 5:30PM. The occasion provides an opportunity to discuss the artists’ creative processes, inspirations, and artistic evolutions.
For more information about the exhibition, reception, or art talk, please contact 860-824-7424 or visit huntlibrary.org/art-wall.
The David M. Hunt Library, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, is committed to supporting regional artists by showcasing exhibitions that foster visual literacy, community engagement, and creative exploration.
David M. Hunt Library
63 Main Street
Falls Village, CT 06031
