Barbara Sorensen: Recent Aquisitions

The Mennello Museum of American Art is delighted to share with the community recent acquisitions from celebrated artist Barbara Sorensen. Based in Orlando and Aspen, Sorensen has long been inspired by nature and the diverse materiality of our every changing environment. Distinguished for her work in clay, the exhibition includes Chalice Forest comprised of multiple vessels that rise toward the sky as inverted mountains, in homage as earthly offering. Individually striking in tactile detail and trace, yet collectively the installation is dramatic; simultaneously majestic and awe inspiring while sublimely somber. The vessels do not contain, but signify nourishment as ritual, primordial and bodily. The exhibition also includes several ceramic Boats, a series the artist has long been fascinated with as yet another human vessel located between water and sky, quietly distilled, movement frozen. For this acquisition highlight exhibition, Sorensen is also creating a new, site-specific installation that continues her experimentation with materials, movement and form as located in nature and constantly shifting, in undulating rhythm, pattern, and palette.

Michael A. Mennello has followed Sorensen’s career for over thirty years, has acquired work for his personal collection, purchased work and donated it to Orlando Museum of Art, and is now gifting 14 major pieces to the Mennello Museum of American Art in honor of Marilyn L. Mennello. 

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website