JOURNEY INTO SELF EXHIBITION

This exhibition is generously sponsored by the Peabody Essex Museum and The Michael and Ronne Cosel Foundation 

Hannah Gathman

Hannah Gathman is a Salem-based arts advocate with a varied professional background in arts and nonprofit management. She holds a BA in History of Art and Architecture and an MS in Arts Administration, both from Boston University, where she currently works as Director of Alumni Programs and Events. Hannah has previously worked at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) as Director of Events and Social Programs and as a Senior Arts & Culture Planner for the Greater Boston region at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC). During a stint in Southern Maine, she founded the consulting firm Promenade Projects and assisted nonprofit organizations with public programming, marketing campaigns, and strategic planning, and served temporary appointments as the first director of the Arts & Cultural Alliance of Freeport and the Desert of Maine Center for Arts & Ecology.

Hannah has lived in downtown Salem since 2022 and currently sits on the City of Salem's Public Art Commission. In her spare time, she takes her rescue beagle to Pamplemousse for treats and plays Irish music gigs in North Shore pubs.

Dissonance

by Jonathan Pinto

I kept coming back to this work of double exposure — my first impression was a human yin-yang reclining on the couch. Neither version of the subject is fully realized, but you get the sense that when layered on top of each other they would produce the whole. What eventually struck me was the familiarity of the interaction between the exposure layers—the intimate sprawl of two figures comfortable in their entanglement. 

- Hannah Gathman

The Abstract Side

by James Trevino

 Like other works in the exhibition, this painting’s composition hints at the artist’s reckoning with duality—light and dark, bluntness and nuance. The contrast between the realism of the facial features and the texture of the paint dragged over the canvas is arresting to me, and the subject’s precisely centered eye invites (or challenges) the viewer to meet their gaze.

- Hannah Gathman

Aversion

by Annette Sykes

This painting tackles perception of self, specifically by capturing that all-too-familiar accidental under-chin selfie. It’s that beastly angle of yourself that alternately might feel laughably distorted or horrifically accurate, and the subject's reaction feels entirely relatable.

- Hannah Gathman