Exhibition: Joshua Baptista and Bernie Klim

The Marion Art Center is pleased to announce its newest exhibition, featuring paintings by Joshua Baptista and Bernie Klim.

Primarily a painter, Joshua Baptista also mixes various media to create a parallel world filled with strange, mercurial, and innocently curious creatures. Heavily influenced by his roots in the 90’s skateboarding and street art scenes in New England, he projects a “hesher" mindset in his pieces, but does so with a wit and sharpness that illuminates the beauty in the oddities.

Bernie Klim was raised in Cambridge, MA and attended Massachusetts College of Art (BFA, 1983) and Cambridge College (MEd, 2009). Klim continued his painting interests as a member of the Waltham Artists Association where he exhibited his work each year at their annual Open Studios event along with a number of galleries, coffee houses, and retail stores in the Boston area. Today, Klim resides in Mattapoisett, MA where he has summered since birth and now lives year round.

Klim will be exhibiting paintings from his series, Nature’s Cakewalks. The cakewalk was a pre-Civil War dance originally performed by enslaved peoples on plantation grounds. The evolution of the creative dance-step/stroll, where the dancer creates their own style and rhythm, inspired numerous composers and musicians over the years. In 1908, the dance inspired Claude Debussy to compose a piano piece called Golliwog’s Cakewalk, and years later in 1972, American Blues musician Taj Mahal's Cakewalk into Town was released. Klim states, "I found myself humming [to these songs] during my walks, rides in the car, and while painting... these two [songs] are the inspiration for my recent paintings."

"The collection of paintings shown here explores the different stages of my painting process. Like many painters, the intuitive exploration allows me to wander and wonder around ideas for interesting composition, color, light, subject matter, painterly relationships, and application. Some paintings are left at their initial response while others are more realized for their subject, color and light."

The show runs April 13 through May 17, with an opening reception on Saturday, April 13 from 3-5pm at the MAC.

To learn more, and see all upcoming events and programs, visit www.marionartcenter.org.