NORA STURGES | Borders and Edges (Archived)
Install Image: NORA STURGES | Borders and Edges. On view through June 29th, 2025. PHOTO CREDIT: Luc Demers
NORA STURGES
Borders and Edges
May 24th - June 29th, 2025
There’s something about Nora Sturges’ paintings.
Created over a decade ago (2008-2015), the works in Borders and Edges feel like they’re happening right now. They exude hope and fear, pulsing through the absurd and the unknown with a humor and playfulness that hints at the possibility that things might (eventually) be okay.
PRESS
Nora Sturges’ Sublime Dystopia
By Mark Wethli
June 7th, 2025
Two Coats of Paint
ARTWORK IMAGES
Forest
Sulphur-loving Plant
Damp-loving Plant
Plants and Insect Traps
Two Plants
Desert Platform
Tank
Research Area
Houses
Floats
Moon Bounce
Temporary City
Fragments
Barricade
Giotto's Hole
Untitled (after Giotto)
Burning Cat Tree II
Signs
Ramps
Parking Garage
Industry
Research Area 2
Construction Site
Target
Drainage
Dinosaur Park
Lookout
Containers
Pedestrian Bridge
Decoy
Bridge
Artificial Nests
Pier
ARTIST STATEMENTS
Temporary Cities
These paintings depict the edges of human habitation— outposts in the wilderness of the Arctic and overlooked margins of densely populated areas nearer home. The familiar landscapes examine both the practical and unplanned ways we transform our visual environment, while the arctic scenes offer evidence of our attempts to measure, tame, live in, understand, and improve our world, set against the unknowable vastness of nature itself.
Giotto’s Hole
The paintings in the series are mostly inspired by the art that has meant the most to me over the past 30 years—late medieval Italian painting. In some, I reimagine details of medieval frescos as objects in our present-day world; in others, I reflect on the juxtapositions that occur and connections that are made when viewing such art in situ in Italy. The series is named for a particularly wonderful hole Giotto painted in his fresco depicting St. Francis casting demons out of Arezzo.
BIO
Nora Sturges has exhibited her work widely in solo shows at JJ Murphy Gallery in New York City, Grimaldis Gallery and School 33 in Baltimore, Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, Spaces in Cleveland, David Lusk Gallery in Nashville, 1708 Gallery in Richmond, and the Lancaster (PA) Museum of Art, among others.
Her group exhibitions have included Lonsdale Gallery in Toronto, Galerie Youn in Montreal, Civilian Art Projects in Washington, D.C., Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien in Berlin, Germany; Post Times, Asya Geisberg Gallery and The Painting Center in New York City; the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, and Goucher College and Maryland Art Place in Baltimore.
She is the recipient of four Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, and her work has been included five times in New American Paintings.
She received a B.A. in studio art from Bowdoin College, and an M.F.A. in painting from Ohio University. Sturges lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where she is Professor of Art at Towson University.
