Art

Art Comes to Life in North Kingstown

Creating from the imagination

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As you might expect from a maker of collage, Marne Snyder’s North Kingstown art studio is a mishmash, with knick-knacks and ephemera covering every horizontal surface area other than the floor - a fertile breeding ground of ideas for Snyder’s next project.

Out of the chaos, however, springs three-dimensional works of art that are as coherent in execution as they are mysterious in meaning. A grid of toy soldiers doing battle with the dead represented by figures turned backwards or upside down. Figurines of Victorian ladies primly holding their hats are swept along on a background of swirling grey pastels and dusky bird feathers. A small house is ringed by a gilded tiara, which in turn is circled by a nest of twigs, complete with a watchful bird.

“I try to leave things open to interpretation,” says Snyder, who adds that she herself is often unclear where a particular collage is going while a piece is in process. “I’m asking people to use their imagination and open up to the work.”

Snyder has been using her own imagination to create art since the age of two. Hers was a childhood spent playing with toy bunnies and mice and drawing thousands of pictures of princesses. “It was my way of telling stories,” she says. Her mother, a writer, encouraged Snyder to pursue her passion, even buying her a loom when she expressed interest in weaving. She also drew inspiration from her grandfather’s cousin, a woman ahead of her time who was a painter and poet in the Greenwich Village of the 1920s.

Growing up in the Boston area, Snyder attended the artsy Cambridge School of Weston before enrolling in the School of Visual Arts in New York. Art took a back seat to the priorities of raising a family, but Snyder never stopped drawing, and a collage class sparked her interest in creating more three-dimensional works.

A move to Stonington, CT included a stint running a marine store at the Dodson Boat Yard, which she slowly transformed into a shop selling toys, clothing and other nautical gifts (her husband, who ran the boat yard, would eventually have to reopen the marine store elsewhere). Twelve years ago, she decided to rent studio space at the Shady Lea Mills complex in North Kingstown - a sanctuary where she can indulge in an intuitive creative process that she describes as “bliss.”

The artist’s goofy side comes through in her selection of materials, including animal figurines, toy soldiers and action figures - usually culled from antique and collectable stores. These are posed on everything from Native American fabrics to LP records. A few have an easily recognizable element, but most feature an element of the fantastical - a camel standing in a living room created from a cigar box and doll house furniture, for example.

A visit to Snyder’s studio reveals a work process in which multiple collages are in the process of taking shape, piece by piece, as inspiration strikes. “I don’t start with a theme or idea,” says Snyder. There are common themes that run through much of her work: “I like people to appreciate the humor in a piece, and I like to create otherworldly places.”

Snyder opens her studio to the public during Shady Lea’s annual Christmas sale and recently joined the Hera Gallery in Wakefield, where she’s hoping to stage an installation in the near future.

marne snyder, north kingstown, hera gallery, art, collages, so rhode island

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