Juror
Judith Tannenbaum
Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art
The RISD Museum

January 26 – February 23, 2006

Bristol Community College’s Grimshaw-Gudewicz Art Gallery offers another 40th Anniversary celebratory event with On 40 At 40, a National Juried Exhibition. Artists from across the country were invited to submit works that in some way are relevant to the number 40. Works could incorporate elements regarding time, milestones, passages, attainment, change, or evolution.

What is in a number? The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language defines a number as one of a series of symbols of unique meaning in a fixed order that can be derived by counting. The online publication Wikepedia provides several descriptions for the number 40. For example, 40 is the natural number following 39 and preceding 41. In English, forty is the only number whose constituent letters appear in alphabetical order. It is also one of several numbers that is associated with symbolic meaning.

The number 40 has had particular significance throughout various cultures and was important to the peoples of ancient Babylonia, Egypt, and Mexico. It is also relevant to Judaism, Christianity, and the Islam faith. It has been suggested that the number’s significance is simply quantitative: there are 40 days of Lent, or that the number symbolizes a period of trial and privation. But for many ancient peoples, the number probably symbolized a length or period of time of almost unimaginable duration – that just beyond a lifetime. A period of rain lasting 40 days, or a punishment of 40 lashes represented a span of as much as could be imagined or comprehended. Perhaps in the way we measure the span of 100 years as lying just beyond that of a life lived, ancient peoples looked at this number in a similar way.

Although for most cultures, life-expectancy has risen sharply in the last century, most of us still measure 40 years as an important achievement. And though it is a significant length of time, a threshold for each of us, a turning point perhaps, we are eager to explore the territory ahead.

Eleven artists are represented in this exhibition, and, through their work, each offer distinctive insights about the number. From Catherine Carter’s pathways of life, Jeff Carpenter’s layers of an onion, Keith Borges’ metaphor of the open box, Dave Bown’s birthday wishes, Kathleen Petry’s memory sweaters, Brandon Sanderson’s mechanical evolution, Rupert Nesbitt’s reference to electrical current and energy, Anni Abbi’s 1940s dress pattern, B. Lynch’s reworking of ancient myths, Lori Brown’s markers of time, to Sherrill Hunnibell’s layered and excavated collage, their works encompass the broadest range of opportunity to contemplate the definition of 40.