Linnea at Gravers Lane Gallery makes line the subject of an entire show, in ceramic, metal and collagraph prints by Tara Thacker. It opens November 23 in Chestnut Hill and stays up through January 10, 2027, and its reception falls on a First Friday in December. One artist. A single concept. Three mediums.
The Work in Linnea at Gravers Lane Gallery
Linnea at Gravers Lane Gallery is the newest installation at the space, and the idea behind it is simple enough to explain at the door. Thacker treats line as a design element and as a tool, a component that can be multiplied and layered until it covers a surface. The show uses line and repetition to move past the first form of each piece, and the gallery frames the result as a path with no fixed destination, where a viewer chooses which direction, or which memory, to follow.
Ceramic is her main medium, with sculptures and large wall pieces assembled from thousands of individual components. Metal and collagraph prints add other ways to make the same mark, so the show reads as one argument made three times.
The process behind the ceramic pieces is labor-intensive. Each part is unique and serves as an architectural component, and Thacker combines them in different ways to see how they behave together. Line suits that habit, since a line is the simplest part there is, and repetition turns it into a surface.
The Artist Behind Linnea at Gravers Lane Gallery, Tara Thacker
Tara Thacker was born in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1970. She earned a BFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in 1992 and an MFA in ceramics at the University of Washington in 1995. She likes clay for how it handles and how much it resists, and she wants pieces that do not look like ceramic at first glance, soft and downy, closer to fabric than to fired clay.
Birds provide the forms. Her recent work refers to the Remiges and Retrices, the wing structures, and to nesting habitats in her Horizon Series. Thacker is concerned about falling bird populations and ties the trend to intensive agriculture and a warming planet, and she wants the work to invite observation, reflection and hope for habitat.
Visiting Linnea at Gravers Lane Gallery
Linnea at Gravers Lane Gallery is at 8405 Germantown Avenue. It is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and by appointment. The First Friday reception is Friday, December 4, from 5 to 8 p.m., with an artist talk at 6:30.
The exhibition is on view for seven weeks, opening on the Monday of Thanksgiving week. That puts the December reception near the middle of Linnea at Gravers Lane Gallery, with the final days falling on a Sunday in January, so there are several ways to fit a visit around the holidays.
Chestnut Hill rewards slow looking, and Thacker’s show is built for it. A piece that seems quiet from across the room reveals its thousands of small decisions up close, and Gravers Lane has given that kind of patience a place to land for fifteen years.
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