Mingo Junction
2006 (Date manufactured/created)
Oil
canvas
52 in. H
X
44 in. W
Audette was a distingushed teacher and artist whose paintings of industrial ruins and obsolete machinery chronicled the decline of American industry. She was born in NYC in 1938. She studied drawing and printmaking at Smith College, and received her MFA from the Yale School of Art. After graduating she started her lifelong profession teaching at Southern Connecticut State Univ. Her own technique evolved from printmaking to painting around 1980 andearly works show her formative interest in structure-a signature element that would that would define her style and imagry throughout ter career. Interest in discarded and obsolete machinery compelled her her lifelong exploration of junkyards and industrial ruins. "The relics remind us that, in our rapidly changing world, the triumphs of technology are just a moment away from obsolescence . . . transfigured by time and light, which render the ordinary extraordinary, they form a visual requiem for the industrial age."
Gift of the Artist's Estate, 2014
2014.22