The David Winton Bell Gallery will host The Fabric of Light , featuring the work of local artists Nina Cinelli, Cristin Searles, Esther Solondz and Cynthia Treen, from June 12 through July 11, 2004. During the opening event on Friday, June 11, Christine Enos and Tucker Houlihan will perform the dance, a piece conceived and choreographed by Nina Cinelli to music by the Lesser Birds of Paradise. The opening begins at 5:30 and is free and open to the public.

In this exhibit, each of the artists uses fabric and light as sculptural materials to dramatize their interrelationship. Nina Cinelli will present coming home, an installation of silk, cotton and denim. As displayed on the floor, it consists of a pair of shoes and an eight-foot, elongated shadow of a human figure constructed from a patchwork of blue, gray, lavender and purple fabrics.

"I am interested in blurring the lines between costume, sculpture and everyday clothing - in exploring the points of intersection between these concepts," says Cinelli, who holds a B.F.A. from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and an M.F.A. from University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. She is a recipient of the 2003 RISCA New Gene Fellowship and has recently shown her work in group exhibitions in New York, Massachu-setts, Chicago and Providence.

Cristin Searles creates works of organza and glass beads. In some, layers of sheer fabrics of various colors are transformed into three-dimensional, painterly composi-tions. In others, the repetition of a single unit reminiscent of a flower, leaf, or other organic shape creates relief-like formations. The works appear both firm and airy, dense and translucent. The titles - lure, haze and soufflé - further highlight their elusive and poetic nature.

Searles describes her works as being "about beauty care, delicacy and joy, sensuality and space. They are musings on how we clothe our bodies and our environments to reflect ourselves." She earned a B.A. at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., and an M.F.A. from the School of Visual Art in New York City. In recent years, she has exhibited extensively in the Providence area.  

Esther Solondz will present River Box , a shallow, basin-like wooden structure, measuring 12 by 6 feet and filled with water. The piece is part of a larger installation currently in progress, titled Until Everything Not Essen-tial Was Washed Away, which portrays the dichotomies of evolving and dissolving, materialization and demater-ialization, and appearance and disappearance. Using fabric, rocks, fiberglass, underwater pipes and light, Solondz creates a mesmerizing piece in which fabric floating in the water suggests a river flow, continuously bringing in and washing away everything around it.

Solondz received a B.A. in philosophy from Clark University in Worcester, Mass, and an M.F.A. in photo-graphy from the Rhode Island School of Design.  She has exhibited throughout the United States, predomin-antly on the East Coast, and her work is included in the collections of the Fogg Art Museum, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum and the DeCordova Museum, as well as in private collections.

Cynthia Treen will make a dramatic contribution to the exhibit. Her sculptural piece - an twelve-foot high structure made of transparent, off-white silk - is suspended from a ceiling. Meticulously crafted, the piece resembles a huge honeycomb that visitors can enter and inhabit. Its translucent fabric is dramatically lit to emphasize both its lush texture and the spatial enclosure it creates, thereby emanating a comforting and ethereal ambience.

Treen is an artist and designer who combines fine art and functional design. She studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, using her background in design, fashion and architecture as inspiration for creating artwork. She says she is interested in "how the play of light filtering through the fabric affects the spaces we inhabit." Treen has worked with custom furniture designers, architects and fashion designers for magazine and television projects. In 2002 she founded her own business designing window treatments and custom textiles for the home.