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On View in the RSM Art Gallery: The Gleanings by Joetta Maue

RSM Gallery is pleased to present The Gleanings, a solo exhibition of Photography, installation, and embroidery by Joetta Maue. To celebrate the opening, the Gallery is hosting an artist talk and reception on Thursday, October 16. The talk will begin at 5:00pm followed by a reception from 5:30-7:00pm. 

The Gallery is also hosting a Reading Room Event on Tuesday, November 4, 2:00-3:00pm. In this participatory experience, the artist invites you into a shared space of stories and passages that have shaped her practice and informed her way of seeing. Visitors are invited to bring a book—or an excerpt, in hand or in mind—to share, creating a space for reflection, conversation, and the exchange of ideas. Together, we explore how literature and text can illuminate both artistic process and personal perception.

photo of an open book in deep shadow, a light rainbow falls across the page, the word Still appears in the center

The Gleanings
Joetta Maue
October 16- November 25, 2025

Artist Talk & Opening Reception:  
Thursday, October 16
Artist Talk: 5:00pm | Reception: 5:30-7:00pm

Reading Room Event:
Tuesday, November 4 | 2:00-3:00pm
 

About the Exhibit 

RSM Gallery is pleased to present The Gleanings, a solo exhibition of Photography, installation, and embroidery by Joetta Maue. Joetta Maue’s work is a sustained meditation on the presence of the sublime within the everyday, where the banal and the profound co- exist. Light and dark, sound and silence, and intimacy and solitude weave together and unfurl in the worlds of her work. The artworks on view at the RSM Gallery reflect on artistic practice and the intertwined roles of research identity, place, and the archive.

Maue’s practice is rooted in the overlooked fragments of daily life --- evidence of our presence in this moment, on this earth. It emerges in the residue of process, in the traces of the body across space and time, in the slow migration of sunlight across ordinary landscapes and the shifting quiet of the rooms we inhabit. Through installations and juxtapositions, the artist attends to ephemeral light, brief gestures, and nuanced observations, attempting to hold on to what is temporary. Each work is an invitation: to notice, to be present and seek a heightened awareness within the repetitive, mundane rhythms of life.

The embroideries, Close-reads, reveal the invisible research underpinning Maue’s practice and her devotion to language. In transcribing her notations alongside selected passages, she creates hybrid texts that uncover the poetry and concepts embedded in lived experience. The sampler form is central—evoking its historical role in women’s access to knowledge: at once a tool of literacy and an object of constraint. Each stitch a sign of labor and a testament to the pursuit of knowledge and artistic expression.

Sojourn, a large wall installation, plots the geographies of research within artist residencies and the temporary intimacies that emerge through routine, making, and focused intention. These places, drawn together without explicit narrative, exist in intuitive and formal dialogue, reflecting how visual and psychological experiences merge without clear boundaries as we move through time and process.

Maue’s artistic process is an act of holding on and slowing down—an offering to inhabit the present, for both artist and viewer. The work dwells in a space of vulnerability and vitality, never fixed or finished. Thoughts, images, and moments remain in flux, like the fragile objects that hold them. She is interested in the work as a tangible vessel for time, rather than as a static image bound to historical hierarchy—an active reconsideration of what endures, and how.

About the Artist

Joetta Maue is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans drawing, photography, and textiles. At the core of her practice is an engagement with the beauty of the everyday. Through ongoing series, she has explored themes such as intimacy, motherhood and invisible labor, the domestic landscape, light and its relationship to time, and the labor of artistic practice itself.

Her work has been exhibited widely in galleries and museums across the United States and abroad, including the Arts Complex Museum (MA), the San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design, MK Gallery & Institution (UK), the Griffin Museum of Photography (MA), and the Weisman Museum of Art (CA). She has presented her work in major cultural centers from New York to Tokyo, and at numerous academic institutions including Harvard University.

A sought-after lecturer and educator, Maue has worked with leading organizations such as NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, the Japan Society (NYC), Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts (TN), the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (MA), and the Fuller Craft Museum (MA).  Maue currently serves as a Lecturer at Northeastern University, Lesley University, and the University of Massachusetts, and is frequently invited to teach at programs and institutions nationwide.

Her artwork and critical writing have been featured in numerous publications, most recently Boston Art Review, Artists Magazine, Art Spiel, and The Boston Globe.

Maue lives and works in New England with her family.