The great outdoors have long been a source of inspiration for artists and musicians.

New exhibit explores Open Air

By Rose Scherlis

The great outdoors have long been a source of inspiration for artists and musicians – from Sept. 3 through Sept. 26, five artists will display works inspired by nature at the Nave Gallery in “Open Air.”

“A lot of people like the romantic notion of what nature is,” said Matthew Best, whose work will be exhibited. “I am more interested in ‘nature’ in quotation marks. Nature can overtake an area, like weeds growing over an abandoned parking lot. I’m intrigued by its different stages.”

Best records in colorful sketches his discoveries of interesting objects and edible plants that he found while wandering the suburbs.

“This is the beginning of everything,” Best said of the suburban foraging project. “It’s where the rest of my work originates from… They might get abstracted in the end, but that’s where I get most of my ideas—going into people’s yards, with permission, and seeing what I find.”

Artists Nathalie Miebach, Carolyn Muskat, Ted Ollier, and Jason Shoemaker will also display their artwork.

Ted Ollier is a conceptual artist, printmaker, installation artist, and musician. He has proposed and curated three shows and participated in four at the Nave Gallery.

Ollier will have three composite photographs on display.

“I took my camera and pointed it down,” Ollier said. “I photographed the tar marks on the roads they use to repair cracks, because they look like writing, they look like scribbles of an obscure language.”

Ollier has lived in Somerville for two and a half years. “These particular images were all taken in the Somerville, Medford, and Cambridge area of stuff on the ground,” he said. “If I did what I really would like to do… I would buy a 24 megapixel camera and fly over the streets in a helicopter and zoom in… but it’s so much cheaper to piece together 15 photographs than it is to rent a helicopter.”

Ollier said he associates certain colors with each number and word. It is a source of inspiration for his work.

“It’s called alphanumeric synesthesia and it goes back to when I was four. For instance, I realized the number two is always yellow. It was something I just accepted and I didn’t realize until later other people didn’t see that way… On my website I have a little flash animation that displays the time and the date in color form. I don’t want it to just be a ‘gee whiz’ kind of thing, I want it be more conceptual, more deep, exploring the ideas of perception and color and the bleed over between senses.”

The reception is Sept. 25, from 6 to 8 pm. Elaine Rombola and Nathalie Miebach have written musical scores translated from Miebach’s meteorological sculptures. A half hour of songs inspired by weather patterns will be played on piano and church organ before the reception.