The opening reception for Heather Stivison: Seeds of Change features the live acoustic jazz guitar of John Stein.

John is a highly accomplished guitarist and retired member of the faculty at Berklee College of Music. He has many albums to his credit as both a leader and sideman with some of the world’s most renowned jazz acts. John has published several books on composition, a book of solo guitar arrangements published by Berklee College, and numerous articles for jazz magazines.

John will be joined by wonderful bass guitarist Ed Lucie, his partner on the 2021 recording ‘Serendipity.’ Their skill, emotional expressiveness, and fluency as a duet are affecting and memorable, and echo the sentiments of the paintings on view.

Heather Stivison, an artist committed to exploring the intersection of environmental science and visual art in her immersive paintings of the ocean, air, and sky will debut a series of works that Stivison calls Ecoscapes, in the exhibition.

Seeds of Change, with its references to natural cycles of growth, renewal, and hope arrives fittingly at the beginning of spring after a winter of extreme weather conditions. The exhibition is comprised of 25 acrylic on canvas paintings including a fifteen-foot wide installation of four large panels. Stivison’s Ecoscape paintings depict natural objects and symbols seemingly floating, untethered in the wind or in deep and shallow bodies of water. Seed pods, stones, plankton, strands of DNA and nautical charts commingle. Stivison says she is inspired by her reading, observation, and interest in petroglyphs and ancient rock carvings and paintings.