This weekend, the Kara Taylor Gallery in Chilmark opens a one-of-a-kind exhibition of art by Molly Finkelstein, whose subtly three-dimensional, fabric-based pieces have never been shown in public.
Opening Sept. 15, the show — titled Fragments — spotlights Ms. Finkelstein’s highly personal aesthetic, which can also be seen in the muted colors and textured materials she chose to furnish her family’s West Tisbury home.
“I just like quietness. That’s really it,” she said during a visit this week.
Ms. Finkelstein used the same domestic materials — upholstery cloth, burlap and other open-weave fabrics left over from home projects — to create the dozens of works in her new show. Favoring a neutral, yet surprisingly warm palette of deep grays, taupes and broomstraw shades, she thickens her fabric squares and rectangles with paint and mounts them on concrete-skimmed boards, applying hand-stitched designs or painted stones from Island beaches.
Ms. Finkelstein also uses fringe, twine and vintage linens to add texture and dimension to her meticulously-assembled pieces, creating minimalist, four-cornered mandalas that invite the viewer’s contemplation.
Unadorned, but no less compelling, her drawn-thread works are made with an embroidery technique that subtracts rather than adds, drawing the eye to their interplay of presence and absence.
“Her pieces... are so much about home,” said Ms. Finkelstein’s gallerist, painter Kara Taylor, who is also a former neighbor and a lifelong friend.
Ms. Finkelstein is better known on Martha’s Vineyard as the co-owner of Nochi, a women’s boutique on Main street in Vineyard Haven, and the wife of optometrist David Finkelstein, but it was art that first brought her to the Island. In the late 1960s, she worked for three summers at a gallery in Oak Bluffs while majoring in studio art at Muskingum College (now University) in Ohio.
Flipping through a portfolio, Ms. Finkelstein displayed her early watercolor sketches of people chatting on park benches, shopping at an outdoor fruit market and taking part in other everyday activities.
On the Vineyard, she sketched children riding the Flying Horses and scenes at the Oak Bluffs Tabernacle.
“I used to just go places where there were people,” she said.
Ms. Finkelstein also studied life drawing with Island artist Tom Maley, who offered regular classes with nude models.
During her three summers at the Blakesley Gallery on Circuit avenue — owned by one of her Muskingum professors — Ms. Finkelstein had the opportunity to show her drawings and paintings to the public. But her job there proved life-changing in a more lasting way.
“I met my husband on Circuit avenue that first summer [and] we were really together by the fair,” Ms. Finkelstein said.
“He was a babysitter. He took care of a family in Chilmark,” she recalled. “He did the tryout for father, and I’d say he did a great job.”
The couple married in 1970 and in 1973 moved permanently to the Vineyard, where Dr. Finkelstein began his optometry practice in Vineyard Haven. Their two children grew up in the West Tisbury house, with a footpath to Kara Taylor’s childhood home nearby.
Both generations of the neighboring families became fast friends, with all four children in and out of each other’s homes and all four parents welcoming them, Ms. Taylor and Ms. Finkelstein said.
“Her son, Alex, is my age, who is like a brother to me. We all grew up together. Ellie, her daughter, is my sister’s best friend,” Ms. Taylor said.
With two kids and a busy life that included figure skating in Falmouth before the Vineyard had its own ice arena, Ms. Finkelstein switched from painting to hand-quilting, often stitching her way back and forth across Vineyard Sound on the ferry. Her precisely-sewn traditional quilts, which she keeps in a slatted white chest in the living room, won ribbons at the agricultural fair year after year.
Ms. Finkelstein’s careful, intentional stitching plays more than one role in her current artwork, from anchoring a band of fabric to taking center stage as a simple but compelling motif. She began the series as a home decorating project, with no thought of showing it in public, Ms. Finkelstein said.
“We have this little hole in the wall that we go to in Florida that we bought a couple years ago. It’s like 1,000 square feet, and I just wanted something simple for the walls, so I just started making a few things,” she said.
What emerged from Ms. Finkelstein’s workroom — little more than a table in her tidy West Tisbury basement — caught Ms. Taylor’s eye.
“When I saw that [she was] making art again, I said ‘We’ve got to show it at the gallery,’” Ms. Taylor said.
Her offer took Ms. Finkelstein by surprise — and with delight.
“I couldn’t have been more flattered, really, because I think [Ms. Taylor is] amazing,” she said. “So she kind of came up with it, and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, sure!’”
Fragments, by Molly Finkelstein, opens at the Kara Taylor Gallery Sept. 15 with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m.
Gallery hours are Friday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., or by appointment.
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