Three stars
Big Car Gallery,
Murphy Art Center

With affinities for abstraction and contemporary spaces, Julia Bland and Tom Morrill, seniors at Rhode Island School of Design, present works made while studying in Pont Aven, France. Both artists are process oriented and create “paintings” even when not working directly with paint. Morrill offers photographs documenting the completion and removal of four site-specific outdoor installations, along with a digital video. In “Viking Funeral 2010,” an existing, roadside utility pole becomes a base for a temporary, eclectic roadside altar or grave for transient objects. Society’s trash becomes artifacts. Old bottles are systematically placed, diagonal lines drawn with plastic construction tape; a rectangular tier is built with stones (or concrete slabs?). Bland offers two fiber wall works, digital video and oil paintings. Her textiles, one cotton and one muslin, are accented with yarn and circular holes the artist burned into the fabrics. The circular patterning is not unlike her video of moving bubbles inside a pot of boiling water. Bland’s paintings are like woven textiles being pulled apart and, in parts, reconstructed. Horizontal bands of muted colors reach over a deep, black underpainting in “Building the Wall Series, Number 4.” Through March 29; 317-450-6630, www.bigcar.org.