Offshoot

Boston Sculptors Gallery presents Offshoot, Marilu Swett’s solo show of recent sculpture and drawings. Offshoot refers both to growth patterns in vegetation, as well as the studio process itself, where the manipulation of materials and ideas propagate new work.

Swett’s sculpture is informed by the imagining of the interaction of organisms in the life cycle of plants. Acting as both framework and content, her cradled and suspended wire sculptures encompass large and small forms in interaction. The cast knots suggest a reaction to things going awry. Her drawings are meditations on minute structures within the plant body itself. These are done with ink and paint, and cut, collaged and layered with subtle color. One of the larger drawings, constructed with cut and painted paper, is suspended from the wall in a quilt-like grid.

Swett has exhibited throughout the United States, and 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 in Washington state; a New England Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture; a Somerville Arts Council grant; and a Massachusetts Artists Foundation Studio Exchange grant. Swett was an Associate Professor of Art at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA. A greater-Boston native, she lives and works in Jamaica Plain.