Scituate artist's local inspiration

From a seascape near her home and the remnants of a Thanksgiving dinner, artist Susan Denniston of Scituate has created an exhibit that is as much a philosophical musing as a collection of prints. Denniston is displaying about 25 of her pieces at the James Library in Norwell this month, and talked recently about her work with the Globe.

Minot's Myth of Permanence

I moved to Scituate in 2001, after living the South Shore for a number of years, and there’s a seawall at Minot Beach, right near where I live. Around 2005, the seawall had been reconstructed, and it was clean and angular and dramatic. But it seemed like it was only the next year when the ocean had destroyed parts of it again, and it got me to thinking more about the balance and imbalance between man and nature, and then about our fragility and vulnerability and impermanence, and the seawall seems to be a metaphor for that.

It made me continue thinking of that juxtaposition of concreteness and certainty, and the desire -- probably among all of us -- for certainty and concreteness in a world where everything is much more complex and ambiguous.

For “Minot’s Myth of Permanence,’’ I was working with a photograph, then further developed it with the etching process. We -- man -- build the seawall thinking that things will be permanent, and really we always have to confront impermanence....

Searching Among the Currents

Almost two years ago, I started working with turkey bones from a Thanksgiving dinner with family and friends. After I made some soup, I found this bone in an interesting shape, so I saved it. Then it sat on my windowsill, and I started working with its shadows and drawing them. The images became symbolic to me of the ambiguousness, entanglements, and connections that we make with each other.

The turkey bone in “Searching Among the Currents” is just that white image, the negative space. In some of the other works in the show, the turkey bone is interconnected and overlapping with other images. Some are in color and some are in black and white. The ones in color seem to be a joyful dance about connections, and the black-and-white works seem much more ominous about what might lie beneath the surface that’s not readily revealed or exposed.