Years ago, Katherine Tolve and her husband moved into the home that had belonged to his grandparents. The grandparents, she said, had been hoarders. Some new residents might have a problem with that, but Tolve didn’t.
“When my daughter was born, I had no extra funds to buy art supplies. But I said, ‘What do I have around me?'” says Tolve, who graduated from Hartford Art School in 2008. “I can clean up the house. I can choose to stop creating or I can choose to work with what I had.”
“Reclaimed Rubbish,” an exhibit of Tolve’s mixed-media artworks, is at 100 Pearl Street Gallery in Hartford, in a show sponsored by the Greater Hartford Arts Council. The opening reception is Thursday, June 23, from 5 to 7 p.m. The show will be up until Aug. 19.
Tolve’s pieces comment on traditional notions of femininity and domesticity. “Supper Time” is a collage of Betty Crocker Recipe Cards, one of which promises “potatoes the way men like them!”
“The Next Step” has an engagement-ring motif and images of babies and a 1950s-style family, but a blank space at the top, to suggest the uncertain future.
“Live Work Die” surrounds a portrait of Tolve’s grandparents-in-law with blank checks and obituaries.
Many of the works are autobiographical, about the struggle to live a life of a woman’s own choosing.
“It represents what a lot of women today are going through. Do I want children? Do I want a career? How do I balance this?” Tolve, of Windsor, said. “Every generation asks this question. The answer is different for each generation.”
“Reclaimed Rubbish” is at 100 Pearl Street Gallery in Hartford through Aug. 19. The opening reception is Thursday, June 23, from 5 to 7 p.m. letsgoarts.org/gallery
