Janice Mauro has twenty pieces in an online solo exhibition from G-Town Arts. The gallery is based in Redding, CT.

VIEW THE EXHIBITION

Janice Mauro works by taking things away. Direct carving means every decision is permanent — what the chisel removes is gone, and what remains is what was always there, waiting inside the wood. The sculptures in What the Body Holds span mahogany, walnut, cherry, elm, basswood, oak, dogwood, pine, and driftwood pulled from shores and riverbanks already shaped by water and time. For Mauro, the choice of material is never casual. Pine is what the world overlooks. Black walnut is what it builds its institutions from. Cherry glows from within even in shadow. Each wood carries a history, and Mauro chooses deliberately, working with that history rather than against it.

The figures she carves have names — Simona, Ninja, Spirit Child. They stand at human scale, some beyond it, with the particular authority of people who have been standing a long time. Running alongside them are the It’s a Man’s World series, tracking a single argument across materials and scale about who gets to occupy which rooms; the Covid Memorial works, where figures press inward rather than outward, present and disappearing simultaneously, carved during a pandemic from grief that needed somewhere permanent to live; and the Woodland Dwellers, driftwood figures carrying two histories at once — the life of the wood before Mauro found it, and the life she uncovered inside it.

Every cut Mauro makes is irreversible. In a practice built around women who have been overlooked, grief that moved on too fast, and children who will not stay small, the permanence of direct carving is not a technique — it is a position. Direct carving cannot be undone. For Mauro, that has always been the point.

This is a virtual exhibition. To see the work in person please contact the gallery.