Terri Priest's Static Variations: Blue X2

Visiting the Worcester Art Museum, I was drawn in by the piece Static Variations: Blue x2. The art museum was having a series on her, and had several of her works up, but this one stood out most of all. Static Variations: Blue x2 (fig. 1) is a highly political piece about the Civil Rights Movement. In order to interpret it one must understand the life of the artist, Terri Priest, and the Civil Rights Movement itself. Terri Priest was born in 1928, in Worcester Massachusetts. She spent her entire life in the area. She grew up on Millbury Street. A child of the depression, Priest’s parents, did not have the funds to send her to college, despite her desire to become a lawyer. Instead she started working in her parents fruit stand and later at a soda bar. She attended public high school and discovered that she had artistic talent. With encouragement from her teacher, John Reardon, she decided to continue to pursue art. From there, she took classes at the Worcester Art Museum and started working at Haddad Sign Company where she learned more about painting and a small amount about restoring works of art. She married her husband in 1948, and put her love of art to the side for a little while. She worked as a graphic designer for the company Wyman-Gordon and continued to paint …show more content…
For example her piece, The Sky is Falling (fig. 2) incorporates the same ideas, but instead the stripes are in the center of the panels. The blue in this piece is what sets her Static Variations apart from her Organic Interaction. The rich blue that surrounds the piece only aids in the optical illusions of her pieces. The primary color serves to make the stripes more vibrant. Blue is also a very interesting color to pick. Of all of the primary colors, the amount of things that are naturally blue is limited. However, blue is also the color of the sky. The sky covers everyone