"STORRS, Connecticut - Before scrolling their omniscient portable supercomputers, people looked to the stars to answer their deepest questions about the universe. Then there's Connecticut-based artist Maureen McCabe, 79, who remained spellbound by the sorcery of tarot card readers, carnival barkers, and voodoo priests for much of her life. Her mixed-media installations and collages exploring the origins of mysticism are the subject of an engrossing new retrospective, Fate and Magic: The Art of Maureen McCabe, at the University of Connecticut's William Benton Museum of Art through December 14."
"McCabe's exposure to art began when her mother took her from their home in Quincy, Massachusetts, to the Museum of Fine Arts Boston for weekly art classes. She began to think about the intersection of cultures and was particularly fascinated by the museum's medieval section. "We were given paper and pencil and told to find something to draw," McCabe said in an interview in the exhibition's catalog. "We could go anywhere unaccompanied. I was drawn to the magical, the myth sculptures, and medieval relics. It all made sense to me.""
"Her interest in the occult piqued in 1978, when she was on sabbatical in Paris from teaching at Connecticut College. McCabe encountered Jean-Paul Sartre's 1943 screenplay Les jeux sont faits ( The Chips are Down), in which two characters are given a second chance at love but realize they cannot escape their destinies, and started a series of assemblages exploring themes of fate and free will."
Maureen McCabe, 79, creates mixed-media installations and collages that investigate mysticism, tarot, carnival folklore, and voodoo traditions across American supernatural history. Fate and Magic: The Art of Maureen McCabe appears at the University of Connecticut's William Benton Museum of Art through December 14. Early museum visits in Quincy and Boston fostered an attraction to medieval relics, mythic sculpture, and cultural intersections. A 1978 sabbatical in Paris introduced Jean-Paul Sartre's Les jeux sont faits, prompting assemblages that probe destiny, second chances, fate, and free will. Longstanding fascination with occult practitioners informs recurring imagery and materials.
Read at Hyperallergic
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