The Rhode Island State Council on the Arts (RISCA) has announced a new art exhibition on display at TF Green Airport’s GREEN SPACE Gallery, a partnership between RISCA and the Rhode Island Airport Corp. (RIAC). The gallery now features works by Rhode Island artists Pascale Lord, Barrington, Sarina Mitchel, Providence, and Jill Stauffer, Wakefield, and will be on display through Sept. 19.

“By highlighting RI artists, this gallery offers travelers coming and going to our state a vision of our incredible creativity. It’s a treat for first time visitors and residents to discover RI’s thriving and diverse arts community, a key economic driver,” said Randall Rosenbaum, RISCA’s executive director.

Pascale Lord, a French native, began her art career at Strasbourg University graduating with a CAPES in Arts Plastiques. She completed her master’s by working with the Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art. Following graduation, she continued her art through teaching and had the opportunity to organize exhibitions with regional museums. In 2005, she relocated to the United States with her family; first to Seattle where she was an active member of Gallery 110 and had several exhibitions on the West Coast, then to Rhode Island in 2011 where she is an active artist member at IMAGO Gallery in Warren. Her work is focused on individual and collective experiences morphing into memory, which in her words, “fades, degrades, erases, resurfaces, tears, and stretches, like the canvas of my paintings.”

Sarina Mitchel is an artist based in Providence. Fascinated by the intersection of science and art, her current focus is on paintings inspired by cells and biology. The paintings on display are based on microscope images of epithelial cells in human lungs, which form an essential barrier, separating one organ from another, outside from inside, our bodies from the world. Her works turn the complexity of groups of airway epithelial cells into something beautiful that will intrigue viewers. She uses iridescent inks to create a sense of depth and motion and adds a dimensional element to her paintings by etching patterns into the surfaces. Her artistic process involves hand-tracing the cell boundaries, then programming a CNC router to etch that image onto the painting surface. Mitchel says, “When airway epithelial cells cannot perform their function as a barrier, a person can become sick with respiratory diseases like emphysema or COPD. Little did I know when I started working on this series, before the pandemic upended our lives, these are the same cells COVID-19 first attacks when it reaches our lungs.” Mitchel’s work has been shown throughout Rhode Island, and in cities such as New York, Boston, Kansas City and Golden, Colorado. She has donated artwork to benefit organizations such as AS220, the CSPH, the Attleboro Arts Museum, Visual AIDS, Operation Breakthrough and Planned Parenthood.

Jill Stauffer is an interdisciplinary artist based in Wakefield. Her interactive installations are inspired by the coastal ecosystems and sacred spaces of the places she’s lived. The pieces serve as interactive spaces for self-reflection and the exploration of themes related to ephemerality, grief, spirituality, transformation, and the beauty and fragility of the natural world. Stauffer’s work is born out of a ritual of labor, installations which are the whole of many components, each crafted delicately in a ritual of contemplation. Her hand is visible in each piece, explicit labors of sewing, cut paper, and the application and sanding down of paint layers. Stauffer holds a BA from Middlebury College in Vermont, with majors in Studio Art and Architectural Studies. She recently completed an Artist Intern Fellowship with NE Sculpture and looks forward to an internship with Josephine Sculpture Park this summer. In addition to her art practice, Stauffer has worked in arts administration with community art and design nonprofits in Providence, Baltimore and Minneapolis.

Exhibitors for GREEN SPACE were chosen by panelists Kathy Hodge, Viera Levitt and Frank Poor.

GREEN SPACE Gallery and Block Island Airport Gallery are a partnership between the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the Rhode Island Airport Corporation, promoting outstanding work by artists living and working in Rhode Island. The galleries present art to an ever-changing audience of local, national and international travelers.