Marilu Swett
Glow
2021
I make work in the dual areas of sculpture and drawing. My work reflects my interest in biological form, its volume, complexity and variety. I indicate this in a general and fanciful way, by abstracting, inventing, and drawing relationships among forms. The work shifts between the layered space of my ink drawings and the factual space occupied by sculpture. References include natural systems and subsystems, microscopic form, telluric and oceanic form, images from the human body, and industrial artifacts.
Phosphorescence happens in Long Island Sound and up and down the East Coast, as many ocean inhabitants glow at night when disturbed (dinoflagellates, jellyfish and ctenophores, and algae) and can be seen from the shoreline. GLOW is an expression of my fascination with phosphorescence in nature.
About the Artist
Marilu Swett, a greater Boston native, lives and works in Jamaica Plain, MA. She has exhibited throughout the US in venues including The Peabody Essex Museum (Salem MA), The Sculpture Center (Cleveland OH), The Center on Contemporary Art (Seattle WA) and the Charles A. Wustum Museum of Fine Arts (Racine WI). Outdoor venues include Byrdcliffe Arts Colony (Woodstock NY), Chesterwood National Historic Site (Stockbridge MA), Wentworth Coolidge Mansion Historic Site (Portsmouth NH), and the Christian Science Center Plaza (Boston, MA). She has work in several corporate collections, including Bank of America, Fidelity Investments, Meditech Corporation, and New England Biolabs. She is the recipient of a First Light award for the Town of Brookline (MA), a residency for iron casting at the Maryhill Art Museum (WA), a New England Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture, a Somerville (MA) Arts Council general support grant, and a Massachusetts Artists Foundation Studio Exchange grant.
Swett has been an Associate Professor of Art at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA, and is a member of Boston Sculptors Gallery.