In an artist statement, Droge defines \u201chiraeth,\u201d a Welsh term, as \u201ca homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for lost pieces of your past.\u201d A year prior to when she began the work that would end up in this exhibition, Droge\u2019s brother died of an opiate overdose. \u201cEverything familiar had come undone. I was navigated uncharted waters,\u201d she writes. \u201cI began a series of prints based on the idea of unraveling an Aran sweater.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those prints are included here, as well as numerous cyanotypes and several pieces that seem to serve as a stand-in for the sweater itself.<\/p>\n

Haunting and apparitional, Droge\u2019s work in Hiraeth is vibrantly nostalgic. With a primary color palette of white and aqua, the show conveys a nautical theme, the images vaguely recalling fisherman\u2019s maps and navigational charts. Droge and her brother grew up sailing on the water. They\u2019d spend summers on Block Island.<\/p>\n

Droge came to study at MECA in 2009, and as she recalls it, kept to herself about the heavier themes of the past year that had been informing her work. She says that even as she was making the embossings and occasionally showing them in town, she\u2019d never really talked about the work\u2019s connection to her brother. \u201cI would just talk really vaguely about the universal feeling of being lost at sea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Years later, Droge made cyanotypes working with the same themes and materials, a set of stick chart drawings she says \u201chelped navigate emotional and unconscious waters.\u201d A photographic printing process that ammonium iron citrate and potassium ferricyanide, cyanotype prints emerge a cyan-blue hue, squarely in the register of marine aesthetics. Relative to other methods of printing, the image tends to fade when exposed to the basic elements.<\/p>\n

Printed, the crudely formed stick charts took on constellatory patterns, and she combined them with the sweaters and embossings for a three-pronged exploration of what the artist describes as the unconscious emotional realm she\u2019s navigated since her brother\u2019s passing.<\/p>\n

Droge wonders if the story behind this work overshadows its universality, but her exhibition at the airy, well-lit Frank Brockman Gallery in Brunswick, is simple and inviting. Frayed ends of the cable-knit sweater appear in the cyanotype \u201cShoals\u201d as the distant shores of land masses, with narrow isthmuses curling off the frame. In \u201cProphecy,\u201d we see the white form and outline of the sweater as though its arms are raised up in surrender. In the cyanotype \u201cThief,\u201d the sweater-sleeve imprint conjoins with a bed of stars imprinted from the stick charts.<\/p>\n

As an educator who encourages young artists to engage with the coastline and its various storylines, from the effects of climate change on working life to the drug problem in coastal communities, Droge\u2019s exhibit here is without question the most personal we\u2019ve seen from her. It\u2019s harrowing stuff, even with its macabre themes soundly sublimated into an art medium, the cyanotype, that could otherwise be described as angelic. Viewers would enjoy it even without knowing the whole story, its universality is indeed strong. But for those who might grapple with the work in particular terms, it\u2019s as lifeaffirming as it gets.<\/p>\n

Hiraeth<\/em>, works on paper by Michel Droge | Through Aug 31 | At the Frank Brockman Gallery, 68 Maine St, Brunswick<\/p>\n<\/div>\n