“Top 10 Things to Do on Oumuamua” 

Matt Tracy’s deep concern for the perils of rampant human development and expansion is evident in his paintings. Many of his works show congested cityscapes rendered graphically in a semi-flattened perspective with endless, tangled conglomerates of factory buildings. In some there are trees competing for space and growing out of the tops of architecture. In others there are rivers that appear to be made of oil rather than water. Swirling flames peek out from between structures. Tracy combines humor and wordplay, labeling buildings and plots of land with absurd phrases like “Free Bacon”, “Empathetic Metropolitan Area” or “Secure Building” (even though said building is currently on fire) to underscore an interest in mapping and highlight the audacity of human-imposed boundaries and corporate sponsorship. In other works, his work becomes more sculptural; he paints on irregularly shaped panels and creates topography with soil or man-made objects he has found in the landscape, like clear plastic containers that operate like lenses to look through. These pieces are more spare- still alluding to the land, and still utilizing humor, but leaving space for viewers to contemplate.

”Quadrats of Growth”

In her exhibition, ”Quadrats of Growth,” Heather McMordie is showing samples from two current bodies of work. For her interactive series “Moving Marshscape” McMordie has hand-printed representations of aspects of the saltmarsh ecosystems she has observed, while shadowing researchers in their field work, onto fabrics patches which are assembled into “movable quilts”. These quilts are small sewn panels with snaps sewn into them, displayed overlapping one-another in various configurations which may be rearranged to shift the compositions, and mimic both the shifting coastline and humans' impact on it. 

In her series, “Six Year’s Growth”, McMordie uses detailed pen and ink drawing to present viewers with intimate vignettes of plant life which she had encountered and captured on her phone’s photo roll. She delicately renders many of these glimpses onto a single page, filling in separate boxes and leaving parts of the grid blank. The compositions’ structures recall a calendar version of a field journal, which further iterates the significance of time and of pausing to notice and perhaps render a memory of a certain place before it has become another place altogether. 

Heather McMordie, whose studio is in Providence, is also a recent recipient of Providence’s Interlace Project Grant for “ the providence community herbarium” which is an unofficial survey of the city’s vegetation through the eyes of community members. She has worked with organizations such as Creature Conserve and the Urban Soil Institute.