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C LOT H PA I N T I N G S A N D G R A P H I C S BY A L I
P U C K E R G A L L E R Y, B O S T O N
“Venice can only be read as fiction. The facts tell you nothing. This is a cusp city,
working at the intersection of art and life. Venice is a reminder of how often the
controlled, measured world of knowledge fails us. So much of life resists the facts.
Imagining Venice is imagining yourself.” – Jeanette Winterson, 1991
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Alison Cann-Clift, known as Ali, was born in 1949 in Nova Scotia. Her mother’s family was Canadian and her father’s family was originally from Nova Scotia. However,
her paternal grandfather traveled until he settled in Cuba where he met Ali’s grandmother, an American living there. During her childhood, Ali’s parents also lived in
Cuba where her father was manager of a large cattle ranch. It was as a child in
Cuba that she first saw the circus, which would become an important theme in her
later artistic career. As the artist said many years later, “This early and continuing
interest in the work of illusion developed into my cloth paintings.” Ali moved to
Boston in 1967 to attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, and she has
retained this New England connection ever since. At the Museum School, Ali met
and later married the artist Jack Clift. Jack was an art instructor and his work
greatly influenced her, even as she developed a personal and unique artistic vision.
Ali’s method of creating cloth paintings was initially inspired by a work made
from bits of cloth and cotton, which she saw at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
It made such an impression upon her memory that she began to experiment
with making pictures from fabric. Sewing layers of colored cloth, tulle, string and
embroidered fabric and painting on touches of pastel, Ali creates works with extraordinary spatial illusions and atmospheric effects. Her success and growth as an
artist has allowed her to explore a variety of media including etchings, serigraphs,
monoprints, aquatints and most recently iris prints such as Dress and Carnevale.
Cover Image: WOMAN IN WHITE, Cloth Painting, 59 X 391/2”, AC249
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CARNEVALE II
Cloth Painting
13 X 11”, AC240
CARNEVALE
Cloth Painting
12 3/4 X 11”, AC239
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CARNEVALE V
Cloth Painting
13 X 11”, AC243
Ali’s work continues to deal with various kinds of space; interior and exterior,
vast and minute, physical and spiritual, public and private. Her unique and subtle
method of layering fabric to create dimension and shadow is creatively expressed
through still life works, landscapes and in new works that increasingly focus on
figures. Her earlier cloth paintings were inspired by circus performances and
frequent trips to Mexico for the Day of the Dead, which is elaborately celebrated
during All Souls’ Day. As Pamela Fletcher said in her 1993 essay, “Ali’s images of
the Mexican Day of the Dead are meaningful both as explorations of a unique
cultural event and as representations of a common human urge toward celebration
in the face of the unknowable.”
As an extension of her past fascination with spaces of illusion and performativity, many of the artist’s new works are the result of her visit to the Venetian
Carnival festival. With her keen sense of mystery and splendor these new
Venetian scenes grow naturally from her past artistic explorations.
Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities provided a theme for the Carnival’s millennial
celebration, and also creates a backdrop for Ali’s recent visit to Venice. Calvino’s
tale is a series of descriptions told by the fictitious Marco Polo to the Emperor of
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UNTIED, Cloth Painting, 31 X 28”, AC260
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CARNEVALE - MISSIVE, Cloth Painting, 63 X 39”, AC248
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China. As Marco travels round the world, his job is to exchange stories rather than
to bring back treasures or trade. Marco tells of many cities, which he gives feminine
names, but he was very much writing about Venice, and the facets of the city that
have collapsed or vanished behind a tourist façade. Calvino writes, “The people who
move through the street are all strangers. At each encounter they imagine a thousand things about one another, but no one greets anyone, eyes lock for a second,
then dart away, seeking other eyes, never stopping.” We see this scene enacted in
Carnevale, (AC239). As the masks cover the figures’
faces, they allow us to transform ourselves, as viewers,
into others. The artist uses the work to accomplish this
transformation, as she can create any persona on the
canvas that she can imagine. The glimpse of light
behind the two figures seem to remind us that they
might slink behind a column or shadow in an instant –
perhaps to disappear forever, or only to emerge wearing
another mask.
In many ways the Carnival is the essence of the
Venetian myth. From its Square to its churches, from
the historical locations celebrating Venetian greatness to
the inaccessible palaces that guard the memory of a
civilization made of power and elegance, Venice is a
city which shows its soul during Carnival. It is an old
metropolis that lives on in a smaller scale, preserving the
expressiveness of its language and renewing its community traditions, which are often tailored to a tourist
dimension. Venetian history is so encompassing and
long lived that Venice has almost become a city of
the world’s imagination. Venice is loved, desired, interpreted, re-founded, owned,
SEA BREEZE, Cloth Painting
27 X 21”, AC245
violated and idealized. It is a place where life seems to be suspended between
memory and imagination.
Venice reaches out to adults and children, Italians and foreigners, lovers and
dejected souls, and especially to artists. Much like John Singer Sargent’s
(American, 1856-1925) Venetian street scenes from the 1880’s, Carnevale V
(AC243) shows deeply shadowed recessive spaces that create a feeling of mystery. Like a stage set, the stairway in the background seem to lead only to an
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imagined space, rather than a clearly definable location. The shadow cast to the
left of the figure creates an amazing sense of depth, separating this diminutive harlequin from the feigned architectural background.
Another theme that Ali threads through this collection of new work is that of
the hand written letter. In the age of electronic communication, the letter may seem
antiquated, but is still an important artistic symbol. In Untied, (AC260) we notice a
single letter resting on a table, as our eyes are delighted by the complementary
patterns of the tablecloth and wallpaper. With the envelope untied and opened, has
the letter been read already and carefully replaced in its envelope, or is it yet to be
read? Perhaps the reader has left the letter for a moment to prepare to receive its
contents. This single letter on a table represents possibility; the words contained
within are limitless. It is a letter of love, or friendship, or family, or of memory and
longing. In the artist’s ambiguity, the viewer finds space for his or her own interpretation. We are free to imagine any words we choose and to act out that imaginary
scenario in our minds’ eye.
In Carnevale – Missive, (AC248) we see Ali’s Carnival experience combined
with the theme of letters. The large white harlequin figure is precariously perched
atop an architectural column, as the pages of a letter drift over the edge. This
melancholy, pensive figure is facing us more directly than many of the other figCARNEVALE, Iris Print (edition of 30),
12 3/4 X 103/4
ures, creating a myriad of emotions for the viewer. Do we pity this sad clown or
worry for his safety? Allan J. Palmer’s statement in his essay about Ali’s circus
paintings certainly applies to the Carnival works, “Ali stitches together a tableaux
of entertainers whose lives and romances she fabricates into tangible fantasies for
the eye and soul.”
Because Venice has nearly disappeared under a sheet of tourism, the best
way to find its meaning is to use the water, its reflections and the play of light and
shadow, to create Venice in one’s own imagination. Ali turns her eye to the
Venetian water in Sea Breeze, (AC245), which shows a letter blowing in a canal.
As the pages are submerged in water, the layers of white fabric upon blue fabric,
and of waves upon waves, create such a sublime texture that the viewer is drawn
to consider the connection between the layers of the painting and the layers of the
artist’s emotional life. The letter on a table makes an ideal still life scene, as in Last
Letter, (AC261) but here the pages of the letter are not still. The pages and the
words and emotions within them are not containable. They do not remain still for
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1966
Cloth Painting
38 X 28”, AC236
us to easily decipher, but rather take on a life of their own, blowing out to sea to
eventually settle in a watery grave.
Venice is a city that one must design and build individually. The tourist side
of Venice is a chimera, while the historical Venice is a museum. The living Venice
is the one where every canal, palazzo and church, has been personally mapped.
No one artist can capture the true Venice. There is no such place. Out of the multiple manifestations of Venice, no one is truly authentic, only each individual can
find a city with meaning, which Ali has certainly done as an artist with great fidelity to her own vision and experience.
Ali’s paintings have evolved through many phases, from the early circus
themes and works inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead, to the many still life
tableaux and landscapes to the most recent renderings of the Venetian Carnival,
but each of her works is imbued with a profound sense of mystery, loss and the
unknown. These canvases have become spiritual places, repositories where the
artist can weave memories, musings, illusion and imagination.
– Destiny McDonald, 2004
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CARNEVALE III, Cloth Painting, 13 X 11”, AC241
CARNEVALE VII, Cloth Painting, 15 1/2 X 121/2”, AC254
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CARNEVALE IV, Cloth Painting, 13 X 11”, AC242
CARNEVALE VIII, Cloth Painting, 151/2 X 121/2”, AC255
CARNEVALE - GRANDE BIANCO, Cloth Painting, 60 X 40”, AC246
CARNEVALE - HARLEQUINO, Cloth Painting, 60 X 40”, AC247
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NORTH WIND, Cloth Painting, 37 1/2 X 47 1/2”, AC234
SINGLE LETTER ON TABLE
Cloth Painting, 18 X 16”, AC256
STUDY IN WHITE, Cloth Painting, 29 X 26”, AC252
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BLUE RIBBON, Cloth Painting, 27 X 22”, AC257
CARNATION WITH LETTER,
Cloth Painting, 201/2 X 211/2”, AC258
STUDY IN WHITE WITH CORAL, Cloth Painting, 331/2 X 411/2”, AC250
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SWEPT AWAY, Cloth Painting, 33 1/4 X 26”, AC235
WINDSWEPT, Cloth Painting, 48 X 47”, AC238
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THE LETTER, Cloth Painting, 34 X 37”, AC230
OVER THE EDGE, Cloth Painting, 29 X 243/4”, AC251
BEACH BANANA,
Cloth Painting, 45 7/8 X 26 3/8”, AC253
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RED CARNATION,
WHITE CARNATION
Cloth Painting
35 1/2 X 38”, AC262
CARNEVALE II
Iris Print (Artist’s Proof)
411/2 X 251/2”
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DRESS
Iris Print (Edition of 30)
311/2 X 26”
WRITER’S BLOCK
Cloth Painting
38 X 451/2”, AC259
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WALL OF MEMORIES, Cloth Painting, 31 X 27”, AC233
AliCann-Clift
Alison
SEPTEMBER, Cloth Painting, 431/2 X 431/2”, AC231
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BIOGRAPHY
PUBLICATIONS
1967-1972
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
1968-1971
Tufts University (B.F.A.)
1979
Artists’ Foundation Fellowship
Ali: Still Life, Paintings of the Last Decade, Pucker Art Publications,
Boston, 2001. Including an essay by Alicia Craig Faxon.
Ali: Beyond the Big Top, Cloth Paintings and Graphic Works,
Pucker Art Publications, Boston & David R. Godine Co., Boston, 1988.
Including an essay by Allan J. Palmer.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2005
Layers and Fabrications, Pucker Gallery, Boston, MA
COLLECTIONS
2001
Texture of Still Life, Pucker Gallery, Boston, MA
Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia, Canada
1998
Monuments, Pucker Gallery, Boston, MA
Boston Public Library, Boston, MA
1998
Day of the Dead II, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA
Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH
1995
Nature Morte - Naturaleza Muerta, Pucker Gallery, Boston, MA
DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA
1993
Ofrendas - Offerings, Pucker Gallery, Boston, MA
Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA
1991
Performance Spaces, Pucker Safrai Gallery, Boston, MA
Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
1988
Circus, Sand and Sea, Pucker Safrai Gallery, Boston, MA
Johnson Art Gallery, Middlebury College, VT
1986
Beyond the Center Ring, Pucker Safrai Gallery, Boston, MA
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
1984
Monotypes, Pucker Safrai Gallery, Boston, MA
Neka Museum, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia
1982
Traveling exhibition: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax,
Nova Scotia, Canada; Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, MA
New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT
1981
Views and Viewpoints: Landscapes of the 20th Century,
Pucker Safrai Gallery, Boston, MA
Schick Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY
1979
Art of the State, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University,
Waltham, MA; Provincetown Art Association, Provincetown, MA
Tel Aviv Museum, Tel Aviv, Israel
Ali's Circus, Pucker Safrai Gallery, Boston, MA
Wellesley Art Museum, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
1978
Rose Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
The Art Gallery, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY
William Rockhill Nelson Museum, Kansas City, MO
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2000
Fine Choices: Memories Now, Pucker Gallery, Boston, MA
1991
President's Choice Exhibition, South Shore Artists' Association,
Cohasset, MA; The Mind's Eye, The Fitchburg Art Museum,
Fitchburg, MA
1985
Boston Arts Festival Invitational, Boston, MA
1984
Miami International Print Biennial, Coral Gables, FL
1981-82
Center Ring: The Artist (Two Centuries of Circus Art),
Traveling Exhibition:
Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI
Ohio Art Museum, Columbus, OH
New York State Museum, Albany, NY
Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC
1981
25th Annual Print Exhibition, Hunterdon Art Center, Clinton, NJ
12th National Art Exhibit, Second Crossing Gallery,
Valley City, ND
Audubon Artists 39th Annual Exhibition, National Arts Club,
New York, NY
1977
Six Artists, Pucker Safrai Gallery, Boston, MA
Centennial Exhibition, Museum School, Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston, MA
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA
SPRING, Cloth Painting, 28 X 261/2”, AC232
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CLOTH PAINTINGS & GRAPHICS BY ALI
DATES
16 April 2005 – 30 May 2005
OPENING RECEPTION
16 April 2005, 3 to 6 pm
The public is invited to attend. The artist will be present.
© 2005, Pucker Gallery
Printed in China by South China Printing Company Limited
Credits:
Design: Lisa Sue Smedberg
Editor: Destiny McDonald
Photography: Max Coniglio
LAST LETTER, Cloth Painting, 361/2 X 411/4”, AC261
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