By Amelia Woodhouse
Spring arrives at the Flinn Gallery on March 12 with Wild Leaves, a group exhibition featuring Yura Adams, Katie de Groot, Maggie Nowinski, and Jacqueline Qiu. On view through April 28 at the Greenwich Library, the show brings together four artists whose practices grow from sustained engagement with the natural world.
Curated by Kirsten Pitts and Isabelle Schiavi, Wild Leaves takes its title from a poem by Patti Smith. The exhibition centers on abstraction as a means of conveying seasonal change, shifting light, wind, growth, and decay. Rather than depict specific vistas, the artists translate lived encounters with landscape into painting, weaving, drawing, and installation.
Yura Adams, based in the Berkshires, works across painting, sculpture, and installation. Her studio practice draws from close observation of her rural surroundings. “My habitual scrutiny of the natural world has caused me to fall under the thrall of the beauty of my surroundings,” Adams writes. Her paintings blend memory, imagination, and subconscious response, building layered surfaces that suggest weather systems and organic movement.
Katie de Groot gathers fallen branches and limbs during walks near her home in upstate New York, later arranging them in the studio as the basis for watercolor compositions. Over time, she began staging the branches in configurations that suggest gesture and relationship. “Having spent many years now looking at trees and forests, I am continually amazed at their individuality, adaptability, and perseverance within a connected society,” she says. Visitors to the Library may recognize her name from Promenade of the Trees, the three-panel installation commissioned in 2024 for the main Reading Room.
Jacqueline Qiu creates woven works using materials connected to natural ecosystems and draws on Kesi silk weaving, an intricate technique dating to the Tang Dynasty. Each weft thread is woven separately, producing detailed, luminous surfaces. Qiu often works intuitively, selecting colors and materials as the piece unfolds. “My art practice is the interface between my inner landscape and the outer world,” she explains, describing her process as a rearrangement of forms drawn from daily observation.
Maggie Nowinski, a multimedia artist, incorporates drawing, installation, performance, and sound into her practice. Inspired by outdoor walks, she produces ink drawings of hybrid human-botanical forms and large-scale installations that extend into the viewer’s space. “I identify with them, I am repulsed by them and ultimately, I am curious to witness these forms emerge,” she says of her imagined organisms, which explore adaptation and survival.
An opening reception will be held Thursday, March 12, from 6 to 8 p.m. An artist talk is scheduled for Sunday, April 19, at 2 p.m.
The Flinn Gallery, a nonprofit organization sponsored by Friends of Greenwich Library, is located on the second floor of the library at 101 West Putnam Avenue. The gallery presents five curated exhibitions each season. Admission to exhibitions and related programs is free. Hours are Monday through Wednesday and Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Sunday 1 to 5 p.m.
