Swenson Exhibit at the Square
Written by: Jake Sorich, Tribune Staff Writer
Mixed-media artist Carly Swenson, a Havre native now living on an exotic European island, returns to her roots with a photo exhibit “Sonhos Melancolia“ (Melancholy Dreams) at the Paris Gibson Square Museum of Art.
The show opens Tuesday with a reception from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. It runs through Dec. 14.
Sonhos Melancolia features photos of abandoned buildings found throughout the Portuguese island of Terceira, where Swenson lives. Her fascination with these structures is “purely aesthetic,” she writes. Swenson “admires nature’s unlimited ability to reclaim itself and the visual reassurance that nature persists beyond human interference.”
In this exhibit, Swenson found an eerie reminder of human presence at the locations she chose to shoot. Her images captured “fragments of the lives of unknown people, forgotten under layers of dust and debris.”
Swenson received her BFA from Bemidji State University in Minnesota. Her fine arts degree included a 2-D emphasis with an art history minor.
During her time at university, she studied abroad on several occasions, traveling to China, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. Before living in Terceira, she spent four years in England.
Since childhood, Swenson has been creating some form of art.
Her work has been displayed in three international solo exhibitions in the Azores. She is “delighted to be returning to her home state to share her photographic imagery with family and friends who have supported her artistic aspirations,” she writes.
For more information on the show, visit www.the-square.org/exhibits_upcoming.html online or call the museum at 727-8255.
Carly Swenson • Intuitive Artist 