By Amanda Estes
Staff Writer
    Karen Gelardi’s interest in natural forms is oriented around a broader fascination with the visual manifestations of something that has been broken, interrupted or damaged.
    “If you’re driving down the highway, the trees that are really messed up-looking that got cut because of the telephone cables or that got chopped down or died because the tree next to it was taller, the ones that are just getting by…I think visually they become the more interesting forms,” she said during a recent interview at Front Room Gallery.
    Gelardi’s solo exhibition of new artwork, entitled “Saco Bog,” will run through July 29 at Front Room Gallery, located at 378 Cottage Road in South Portland.  
    The exhibition features paper collages and sewn sculptures made from drawings Gelardi silk screened on to cotton, linen and velvet fabrics.
    In the work, Gelardi brings broken pieces together to create interacting forms.
    “I think it comes from an interest in contemporary psychology really and my own… way of thinking,” she said of this aspect of her work. “I think that we are always being interrupted and…I’m interested in adapting to things that end or things that are damaged or broken…how can you be resilient?”
    The South Portland resident, who studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, said the two and three-dimensional components of her latest work represent an evolution from her nature drawings.
    “It’s a very important part of my process,” Gelardi said of drawing. “Even when I’m working with sculpture, I think of it as drawing. I was looking for ways to continue to develop the drawings further and I was interested in turning them into three-dimensional objects.”
    Gelardi, who has gone through periods of “obsession” with pinecones and broken twigs, said she has spent the last few years experimenting with fabric. With her “day job” as Associate Creative Director for Angela Adams’ collection of handcrafted accessories, clothing, glassware and home furnishings, Gelardi said fabric was “part of my language.”
    Within the last few years she began experimenting with fabrics and sewing together cylinders that began to resemble logs.
    “I found the forms I was making were mimicking the forms I originally observed in nature,” she said. “I would draw plants and sticks and pinecones and…then when I was making the three-dimensional stuff, it just started to have the same shape.”
    With 70 percent of her new work complete, Gelardi said she was looking for another layer of meaning. As she took a closer look at the collages and fabric sculptures, she began to see elements of the Saco Heath preserve, a place she had visited several times over the winter.
    According to the Saco Bay Trails Web site, centuries ago, the Saco Heath consisted of two acidic ponds. As the acidity of the water hinders the decay of plant material, sphagnum moss or peat began to build up in the ponds, gradually creating peat mats that grew together to form a “raised coalesced bog.” Visitors to the preserve can walk across the heath via a floating boardwalk.
    “It’s just a very unusual environment,” Gelardi said of her interest in the bog. “The things that grow there have to adapt to the acidic environment so they’re kind of scrappy…”
    Deprived of nutrients, she said the trees in the bog are short and yellow. In her sewn, fabric sculptures, also short in stature, Gelardi saw aspects of the trees. When setting up her exhibition, Gelardi said she chose to hang everything low in the space to create the feel of a landscape that surrounds you, but doesn’t overpower you.
    Gelardi said the paper collages, made from pieces of paintings, photocopies and tape; remind her of the moss because they represent a visual landscape that is difficult to navigate.
    “I was very interested in taking my drawings and having them expand like a growing organism,” she said. “So I make them repeatable so they can expand so I took lots and lots of photocopies and taped them together kind of like the way the moss grows in the bog,” she said.
    When trying to navigate a complicated concept, Gelardi said it is best to break it down into smaller components and so her collages also contain elements of geometry. Gelardi said she has always been drawn to triangles starting at a very young age as her family had a small business making a toy called Triangles and Links. The toy had red, yellow, blue and clear triangle cutouts that could be transformed into various geometric sculptures. Bringing her work full circle, Gelardi added that she grew up in Cape Porpoise, right on the marsh.  
    Gelardi said her artwork is more “sparkly and colorful” than the muted tones of the bog, but if one looks really closely they can find bits of color.
    Some of her smaller sculptures resemble the green and red British soldier lichen that sprout out of the boardwalk and provide bits of color. In the spring and fall, Gelardi said the colors of flowers and blueberry bushes also break up the landscape.
    “If you came to see the show to see this and then went to the bog, it would take a while to shift your perspective..,” she said. “You have to look closely to see all the pops of color that I have in the work.”
    For more information about Karen Gelardi and her artwork, visit her online studio at www.karengelardi.com.
    Front Room Gallery is open Thursday through Sunday, from noon to 5 p.m. or by appointment. For more information, call 767-9070.