Randy Garber

"It is all too easy to take language, one's own language, for granted-one may need to encounter another language, or rather another mode of language, in order to be astonished, pushed into wonder, again." - Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices: A Journey into the World of the Deaf, 1989

Randy Garber’s studio practice is divided between her workspace in Boston’s South End neighborhood and the Mixit Print Studio in Somerville, MA. She works eclectically, with a passion for using traditional printmaking and painting techniques to express her intensively researched contemporary concerns and concepts. Garber was raised in Philadelphia, PA watching her father, a hand engraver, carve portraits into silver platters and minute family crests into signet rings. Randy Garber currently teaches drawing and printmaking at Curry College and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and lives in the Boston area.

The two paintings featured are made in the style and with the technique of traditional Indian Miniature Painting. Garber is drawn to this tradition because of its use of intense, saturated pigment, symbols that portray the landscape of the mind, and a peculiar sense of space in which figures hover between the volumetric and flat. This visual and conceptual "in-between", as well as the acute attention to detail suits my subject matter and artistic temperament. The miniatures are made on handmade Wasli paper: layers of cotton rag paper bound together by flour and water, stretched on a board and then burnished to a smooth, firm surface. ("Wasli" is the Persian word for lovers.) Garber used her finger as the palette for the watercolor pigment; the skin absorbs the excess water when she lifts paint with an extremely fine-haired brush. The semi-dry colors are laid down in single, very small strokes that blend optically. Gold leaf is added at the end or during the process.

Garber has shown extensively within the US. She has participated in over 90 prestigious exhibitions. Few of her select solo exhibitions include “What You Already Know,” Broomfield Gallery, Boston, MA, ’08, Solo Exhibition, Viewpoint Gallery, Schenectady, NY, ’07, Solo Exhibition, Naz Art Gallery, Newton Centre, ’95, MA, Atelier Gallery, Boston Architectural College, Boston, MA, ’95, Solo Exhibition, Sony Electronics, Newton, MA ’95.

A recipient of many artist awards and grants including ones from the Puffin Foundation and St. Botolph Foundation, Garber's work can be found in museum, corporate, and private collections including The Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Decordova Museum, the Boston Athenaum, The Boston Public Library, the Children's Hospital, Karp Cancer Research Building, and the Governor Baxter School for the Deaf in Portland, ME. Recent exhibitions of Garber's work include the Decordova Museum, Boston Convention Center, and the Dishman Art Museum.