'Sea Creatures' opens at Exeter Gallery
EXETER — “When I was seven, a lady referred to my mother as the artist. I corrected her, ‘I’m the artist; my mom’s the photographer,’ says Cleo Huggins in an interview about her upcoming show of oil paintings 'Sea Creatures'" opening at the Seacoast Artist Association in Exeter on Wednesday, Jan. 31. “Obliged to live up to that snotty claim, I went to RISD and majored in Graphic Design (aka Visual Communication). I wouldn’t call design the 'art' I was adamant about at seven, but it was a better catch-all for someone with too many other interests: music, technology, collecting sets of similar things for no apparent purpose.
“In my junior year, 1979, I dabbled with a mainframe computer at Dartmouth to digitize shell forms that I could rotate in 3D. This led to more digitizing projects, and I spent a summer in Germany digitizing typefaces for optical printers. But I did not end up in Germany. After RISD, I taught Graphic Design for two years at the Portland School of Art (PSA), now Maine College of Art (MeCA). As PSA transitioned to MeCA, I required a master’s degree to continue teaching. I joined three other students at Stanford University as the charter cohort in a master's program called Digital Typography. However, I did not return to Maine to teach. Instead, I was sucked down the rabbit hole of what became Fonts and Silicon Valley.
“I stayed in California for 10 years, working on creative projects in corporate environments: Adobe, Apple, etc., inoculating artist values and views into emerging technology. At Adobe, I designed the first digital, scalable font of music notation, Sonata. At Apple, I designed the interface for their online service, eWorld - using a village as the metaphor. If I had remained in Silicon Valley for another decade, I might have cashed out like my peers. Instead, I chose pro-bono graphical work for NGOs like USAID and Oxfam. This took me to India, Malaysia, South America, and Africa with a first-generation digital camera and a laptop.
“When the music stopped, I landed in New England at my grandparents' 300-year-old house, where I spent another decade perfecting the art of being patient with clients and building websites. That was when raising oysters and creating something that lasted beyond the current operating system became far more interesting than technology. Thanks to a series of amazing teachers at Sanctuary Arts (Eliot, ME), I channeled my years of computer art skills into Oil Painting. My collection habit now has an apparent purpose, providing me with an endless supply of oyster shells and horseshoe crabs as models."
“We'd been raising oysters for four years on the Bellamy River and accumulating an epic amount of shells - each one too beautiful and unique to discard. When I took up oil painting, the endless availability of subject matter seemed a natural fit. My models expanded to horseshoe crabs, common shells, and discarded bleached-out lobster bodies. Something magical happened when I started to paint. The world dished up subjects and stunning light every moment and seduced me to learn more. How do these creatures spend their day? What is it like living underwater? How would I paint that? I've chosen realism as my path to understanding how to represent ocean critters and learn how to capture the environment they inhabit."
“And I am elated at last not to have made a liar of my seven-year-old self.”
Huggins’ show “Sea Creatures” opened at the Seacoast Artist Association in Exeter on Wednesday, Jan. 31 and runs through Sunday, Feb. 25. There will be a “Second Friday” artist reception on Feb. 9, 5 to 7 p.m., featuring a raw bar provided by Huggins and her husband. Music will be provided by SAA artist Cheryl Sager and her husband Neal Zwieg. Admission is free and donations are appreciated. Find details about this and other shows this month at seacoastartist.org and follow them on Facebook.
This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: 'Sea Creatures' opens at Exeter Gallery
