Artist Spotlight: July, 2024

Marsha Nouritiza Odabashian

“DIG”
May 12 through August 11, 2024

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Tell us about your background.

I was born and raised in the Boston area to Armenian parents. My ancestral background, including my grandparents’ survival from genocide, was omnipresent throughout my life. I received my early and secondary education in the public schools in a suburb of Boston and in many ways had a typical childhood playing hopscotch, tag, jump rope, and Red Rover with my school and neighborhood friends; participating in orchestra and piano, flute and violin lessons; and attending Girl Scout camp. I rejoiced and struggled growing up in both cultures. As an introvert, having quiet, alone time to draw, paint, read, and write short stories and poetry was crucial.

I studied art and art history at the University of Wisconsin, received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of New Orleans, and a Master of Fine Arts from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.

My work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, Louisiana, Armenia, Australia, and India. I received a Mass Cultural Council Grant in 2023. My work has been reviewed in numerous publications including Hyperallergic, ArtScope Magazine, and The Boston Globe. I have been creating drawings, paintings, and sculpture in a studio in Boston’s South End for the past 20 plus years.

When did you know you were an artist?

There was never a time when I didn’t identify as an artist. In spite of a range of interests, trying or pretending to be anything other than an artist or art teacher was always disorienting.

Was there a pivotal moment for you?

My mother has always been a source of inspiration for me, so it’s no surprise that the earliest pivotal moment involved my mother dyeing Easter eggs with onion skins when I was a very young child. The boiling onion skins from which brown and white eggs emerged as a wide spectrum of red was magical and formed the basis of what art was for me.

In my early twenties, I left a full-time teaching position to fully immerse myself in drawing and art history at the University of Wisconsin.

A trip to my ancestral homeland with a group of academics and specialists in Armenian art history inspired a shift in my work toward greater emphasis upon ancient ruins and a deeper understanding of cultural relics in relation to myself and my work.

Where do you find inspiration?

I find inspiration everywhere and anywhere by the past, present, and future. The ubiquitous impact of my mother’s sewing room, my father’s garden, and my grandparents’ stories are in my work. I am inspired by world history and culture, especially my Armenian culture, including medieval manuscripts; folk and fairy tales; architecture; and topics such as memory, displacement, identity, and post-colonialism. Art historical inspirations include T’oros Roslin, Bosch, Botticelli, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Leonora Carrington. Some contemporary sources are the works of Julie Mehretu and Shahzia Sikander.

What is your favorite medium?

I experiment with a variety of materials in painting and sculpture. In the past two decades I have been using onion skin dye for its pareidolic effects and cultural association, which I combine with drawing and painting media.

Can you describe your process?

In my artist’s statement below, I expand upon how and why my mother’s use of onion skin dye inspired me decades later to adopt the process in large scale paintings and smaller collages.

“These paintings discover universes of varying degrees of reality and wonder in the stains of onionskins. First, I boil the onion skins, which disintegrate into solids and liquid colored red, red-orange, and maroon. Then I throw, drop, drip, and pour the mixture onto canvas, paper and/or compressed cellulose sponge. Each result is unique, a miasma of layered textures, shapes, and stains, which I coax, cajole, and tease into plants, animals, and humans in varying degrees of hybridity, development, and completion.

Vignettes of characters placed in isolation or in clusters are often disjointed in relationship to history and location. Indefinable landscape/ interior settings merge and contradict one another, harboring hints of secret narratives. I exploit size and scale to invoke uncertainty, absurdity, and humor.”

Routine, collection, ritual, observation, memory, and imagination contribute to the process of creating my art.

Is there anything else you’d like us to know about your work?

As a SWANA (Southwest Asian North African) artist, I link my artwork to other ethnic and world cultures and history. Creating is a means to explore my own identity within world culture and history. The power of art lies in its ability to amplify and combine disparate voices and to hopefully contribute toward world peace.