Quarry Art

By Suzanne Révy

Granite is an igneous rock formed from cooling magma and is common in the earth’s continental crust. It has been mined for centuries to be used in erecting buildings or paving roads. In the 19th century, the granite industry flourished on Cape Ann in Massachusetts, but fell out of favor after the development of asphalt and the economic depression of the 1930’s, leaving gaping holes in the earth. They filled with water and became somewhat risky places for local children to explore and swim. To celebrate the opening of a new annex at the Cape Ann Museum, former Boston Globe reporter and photographer David Arnold invited local artists Tsar Fedorsky, Albert Glazier, Paul Cary Goldberg, Skip Montello, Olivia Parker, Martin Ray, Katherine Richmond, Steve Rosenthal and Constance Vallis to photograph the quarries that dot the landscape in and around Gloucester and Cape Ann.  “QuarryArt” is on view at the Janet & William Ellery James Center at the Cape Ann Museum Green through July 30th, 2023.

(Feature Image) “Swimmers” By Katherine Richmond, 2022, courtesy of the artist and the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA.

The exhibition unfolds through the eyes of each artist and throughout the seasons. Some of the work feels architectural in its construction, some are ephemeral, and others revel in form and texture. A few are postcard views with bright blue skies, while Katherine Richmond’s tall waterfall affixed to the wall offers a visual break in the rhythm of the installation. Each photographer has four pictures in the show, and Richmond’s work includes a refreshing underwater black and white image featuring two swimmers among the granite outcroppings and revealing the ephemeral nature of human life compared to the eternal presence of the stone.

“Foothold” by Albert Glazier, 2022, courtesy of the artist and the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA.

“Autumn, Flat Ledge Quarry” by Martin Ray, 2021, courtesy of the artist and the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA.

“Halibut Point 3” by Olivia Parker, 2022, courtesy of the artist and the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA.

“True Reflection” by Skip Montello, 2014, courtesy of the artist and the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA.

Quarries are beautiful to behold, but the brutality of their birth can be felt in the gashes and ribbons of color on their walls. Thousands worked these mines, pounding the earth to extract material. But the legacy of that hard work has been eroded, and nature seems to be reclaiming the gaping wounds left behind when the industry dried up. Martin Ray’s tree bursting with fall foliage is clearly thriving in a narrow plot of soil, and remarkably, Albert Glazier’s Foothold features a tree seeming to grow from a sheer cliff of solid granite. Olivia Parker’s early spring blooms and brambles in four pictures made at Halibut Point soften the surrounding solid rock. And the water that fills the base of a quarry can be as still as glass, reflecting the towering walls as in Skip Montello’s “True Reflection.”

“Blood Ledge Quarry #1” by Paul Cary Goldberg, 2022, courtesy of the artist and the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA.

“Quarry Structure #1” by Steve Rosenthal, c. 1995, courtesy of the artist and the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA.

Paul Cary Goldberg and Steve Rosenthal frame their pictures architecturally, particularly in  “Blood Ledge Quarry #1” by Goldberg and in “Quarry Structure #1” made in 1995 by Rosenthal. The long mid-tonal range in Goldberg’s picture is a sublime study of of the weight the earth carries. Rosenthal’s  frame in frame composition brings the organic tree branches into a conversation with the inorganic and seemingly immovable stones. Constance Vallis and Tsar Fedorsky bring an abstraction to their studies of the quarries. Vallis’ use of chiaroscuro reduces the sturdy rock to pure light as if it is an extraterrestrial planet in space, while Fedorsky infuses something of her own humanity into her pictures. In one untitled image, a “face” emerges from the boulder that recalls New Hampshire’s “Old Man on the Mountain,” a famous granite outcropping that fell in 2003. It was perched atop a mountain for millennia, and Fedorsky’s picture is a reminder of the vastness of geologic time in her succinct composition. 

“Plutonic Solid” by Constance Vallis, 2020, from the series OUTSIDE Manship, courtesy of the artist and the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA.

“Untitled, Series 2” by Tsar Fedorsky, 2021, from the Quarry Project, courtesy of the artist and the Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, MA.

The textures, striations and implied passages of time in the walls of the quarries are like cat-nip for photographers. These places love to be photographed, and to view the same subject matter through the eyes of nine different artists can be an illuminating exercise to understand both the subject matter and the point of view each photographer brings.  Unfortunately, the exhibit lacked a certain cohesion, and frustratingly, I found the personal expressions of the photographers somewhat diluted by the scattered arrangement of the prints. The exhibition might have benefitted from tighter groupings of all four prints presented together by each of the participating artists. 

For more information: https://www.capeannmuseum.org/exhibitions/quarry-art/

From the exhibition QuarryArt, Constance Vallis (left), Katherine Richmond (center and right). Installation photograph by Suzanne Révy.