“Still/Life” at the NRCA Rotunda Gallery

“Still life” usually refers to a work of art that depicts inanimate objects – a bowl of fruit or a vase full of flowers – but this fall the NRCA Rotunda Gallery is exploring a different meaning: “Still/Life,” (opening September 9th) offers works that reimagine what it means to pause time, to frame the overlooked, and to ask what lives inside stillness?

A collaboration between the New Rochelle Council on the Arts and New Rochelle High School’s arts faculty, the exhibit includes works by 11 artists –   Lisa Archigian, Mia Brownell, Suzanne Butler Richardson, Erika Hibbert, Emmanuelle Loiselle, Michael Manning, Moira McCaul,  Kristen Osterberg, Christian Salvati, Scott Seaboldt and Ben Quesnel —  at two locations, both the NRCA Rotunda Gallery at City Hall and the Museum of Arts & Culture at NRHS.

NRCA Rotunda Gallery chair Lynn Honeysett  writes: Still / Life lingers in the quiet spaces—between breath and stillness, presence and absence. Rooted in the still life tradition, the works gathered here reimagine what it means to pause time, to frame the overlooked, and to ask: what lives inside stillness?

Through painting, photography, and printmaking, the artists conjure both the seen and the sensed. Objects become thresholds; surfaces hold memory; silence speaks. Stillness, here, vibrates. It deceives. It endures.

Shadows hint at what exists beyond the picture plane. Objects hold symbolic meaning and, when placed in relation to one another, form new narratives. Negative space invites the viewer to oscillate between reality and imagination.

Drawing on the Yoga Sutras, the exhibition calls for a deeper mode of perception—Pratyakṣa (direct observation), Anumāna(inference), and Āgamāḥ (testimony). The artists ask us to see not only with our eyes, but with memory, intuition, and trust.

Still / Life is an invitation to look again—and then again—to discover life in the paused, the passing, and the nearly forgotten.

The NRCA Rotunda Gallery is located in New Rochelle’s City Hall at 515 North Avenue, and open to the public during regular business hours through October 24th; in addition the NRCA Rotunda Gallery will be open to the public on Saturday, October 18th as part of ArtsFest. There will be an Opening Reception at City Hall on Tuesday September 9th, from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm.

Photo credit: Ben Quesnel