With Stitch and Rift I and Rift II, August Ventimiglia presents three new works that consider the twin forces of bringing together and breaking apart in the built environment. 

A large-scale wall drawing created in the Holliston Lobby, Stitch consists of five equidistant 38-inch horizontal line segments drawn along a continuous path, as if “stitched” across the span of a thirty-foot long wall. Using a snap-line, a common carpentry tool, Ventimiglia creates both a precise horizontal line and a heavily textured field of blue chalk as the dry dust is cast away by the percussive action of the snapped line.  While the chalked string always remains on the flat plane of the impermeable wall as the drawing is constructed, the resulting image creates the illusion of a surface pierced by a blue thread.

Rift I and Rift II are sculptures of smoothed, dry plaster over wooden forms. The abrupt action of breaking the masses in two creates a sharp-edged fissure that reveals a delicate and complex edge along the fault-line of the break. In the Rift sculptures, Ventimiglia interacts with his materials via a physical gesture that controls the action of making the work, a gesture that results in fragile, unpredictable works of art.