upcoming Exhibition AT THE GALLERY AT STILL RIVER EDITIONS

a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean:
Works on paper by martha willette lewis

october 3 - December 18, 2026
Opening reception saturday october 3, 2 pm - 4 pm

Martha Willette Lewis contemplates the physically manifesting spectre of the climate crisis at hand: the accrual of plastic waste and what it means for our planet’s ecosystems. A number of drawings from this series, Marley’s Ghost, will be on view at The Gallery at Still River Editions from October 3 through December 18, 2026.

Lewis uses rubbings of detritus she gathers on natural paper to reveal its shapes and forms at life size, then adds oyster shell paint and watercolor to highlight the craggy surfaces with colorful planes that belie the tragic implications of accumulating this type of collection. There is a paradoxical, floating sense of lightness while also referencing the permanence of geological and crystal forms.

ARTIST STATEMENT

A Drop of Water in the Comprehensive Ocean brings together selections of recent work from my ongoing series Marley's Ghost, which considers the invisible river of plastic streaming behind each of us. These ghostly portraits document my unwilling consumption of a material which is actively impacting everything on earth. The title comes from Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol, a resonant classic tale which acts as a warning about losing one’s humanity in the face of capitalism. Marley's Ghost echoes that, with a commentary on a newer crisis formed by hyper-consumption and the global manufacture of goods: waste. Throwing something away doesn’t make it disappear, the wraith of it lives on in our landfills or – perhaps worse – gets sent on to other countries: a newer, crueler industry. Most crucially: Plastic never “goes away”. It grinds down into finer and finer particles which inevitably and invisibly infiltrate our oceans, bodies, landscapes. It is now in our brains, In mother’s milk, in wild animals, in the remotest places on the planet, including the arctic. Elusive and often invisible to our eyes, it seems hard to fathom the reality of this. Even the Pacific Trash Vortex, in the Central North Ocean, a massive floating stew of plastic detritus remains just submerged enough to be hard to discern yet is very much real and present. An unwelcome guest at the party.

“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?”

This quote from Marley to Scrooge kept echoing in my head when I started the project. It began intuitively in 2025, and I was not really expecting it to become the marker of accumulation it has become. It was a frustrated reaction to not being able to fully omit plastic from my shopping cart. Even being mindful, I was acquiring quite a haul, and it bothered me.

How do I make these?
I collect my detritus and make color pencil rubbings on unbleached paper of the used plastic packaging, adding oyster shell paint and watercolor to the images materializing on the page. The rubbings give me a photographically detailed likeness at full scale, of these seemingly innocuous scraps of packaging, mostly from food stuffs. The series acts as a witness, a calendar, a diary. The chain I forged in my lifetime.

What then?
I recycle and upcycle what I can. The remains are then entombed into ancillary works – sculptural urns, one for each large work, to go with them. I am not quite ready to show this part of the project yet, but that’s what’s coming. Because it CANNOT go into landfill or the ocean. Better to transform it into something beautiful that is also a signifier of what it was.

About the exhibition title:
“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

The Climate Crisis is the biggest challenge we all face, something that affects everyone, globally. The absence of what is no longer here – the extinctions – and the unwelcome presence of that which accrues haunts me. Like Marley himself, this spectral garbage wanders the planet, unable to rest, breaking down into finer and finer dust to become a part of all life. My own participation shames me and…true to form, I find myself taking its portrait, holding a séance, and trying in some small way to put it to rest, once and for all. Art is thinking made corporeal, and is a wonderful way to hold difficult conversations, to entertain the impossible. This is my attempt to address my own complicity and the complexity of disengaging, of countering, of even contemplating the impact of this most amorphous and ubiquitous of substances….

Other, less harmful materials wait to be created, other solutions can exist.

Artist bio

Martha Willette Lewis is a visual artist, curator, and radio presenter. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she is currently based in Connecticut. Her mother says she was drawing before she could walk, and pencil in hand, she has never stopped. She has degrees from the Cooper Union (BFA, 1987) and Yale University (MFA, 1993). Over the years her work has often merged mathematics, science and technical drawing into abstract diagrammatic artworks. This has manifested itself in myriad ways, notably in 2017 when she was the inaugural artist-in-residence at The Yale Quantum Institute, where she spent the year working with scientists and making art, with whom she continues to collaborate. Additionally, she has been in residence at Lost & Found Lab, the School of Architecture at Hong Kong University and The Camargo Foundation in France. She is currently the resident curator at the Institute Library in New Haven, where she curates contemporary art exhibitions revolving around words, books, and archives. The harms to the planet incurred by the climate crisis resonates deeply with her and she is working on transforming her studio practice accordingly. Reduce – reuse – recycle indeed. We are nothing without a healthy ecosystem.

Permanent art commissions include a mural for the Yale Quantum Institute and a collaborative installation with Marion Belanger, for the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, using their historic library of materials. This project -plants & Insects-was a percent-for-art project through the State of Connecticut. Her outdoor sculpture Thoughts & Prayers, looking at gun violence in America- made in collaboration with artist Margaret Roleke- has been exhibited continuously since its inception in 2022 including at Governor’s Island Park in New York, MoCa Westport, Five Points Torrington, The Bridgeport Art Trail and for the outdoor summer sculpture program atUConn, Avery Point, Groton, all in Connecticut. It is currently at Army of Frogs in High Falls New York. Over the years her art has been included in exhibitions at such venues as The Decordova Museum in Massachusetts, The Tides Institute Museum of Art in Eastport Maine and the New Haven Museum in Connecticut. Abroad she has shown at Modern Art Oxford, The Oxford University Botanical Gardens, The Oxfordshire Visual Arts Development Agency, and The Tricycle Gallery, London. In January 2025, Martha had the honor of having her work featured at the Year of Quantum Celebration, at UNESCO in Paris, France. Martha has been in numerous exhibits at Central Booking and Planthouse Galleries in New York and is currently in the Flat file at Pierogi Gallery. She has been in group exhibits at PS122 gallery, Paul Mellon Arts Center Gallery at Choate Rosemary Hall, Central Michigan State University, Ball & Socket in Cheshire CT and had a solo exhibit at the main branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. She has shown her work in exhibits in Italy, France and Luxembourg. She has participated in The Festival of Aris and Ideas in New Haven CT, given talks about her work and done visits at the art department at Kala Bhaven, Viswa Bharati University, Shantinikitan, India, and the Laboratory of Atomic and Solid-State Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca NY, to name a few highlights. She was selected to participate in the 2015 NAKFI Conference: Art and Science, Engineering, and Medicine Frontier Collaborations: Ideation, Translation and Realization, a National Science Foundation project in Irvine, California and has given presentations at the CAA Annual Conference in 2013 as a part of Never A Day Without A Line: Drawing Foundations and Frontiers at The Art Students League NY, and Fast and Fearless: Drawing & Audience Engagement- Co-presented with Cyra Levenson- at the Annual Convention of the National Art Education Association, in Fort Worth, Texas. Her artwork has graced the covers of numerous books including volumes published by Columbia University Press, Hong Kong University Press, Oxford University Press and others. Recently her images and essays have been included in works produced by Ecoartworks including Soils Turn in 2025, and Monstrous, Evil forthcoming in late 2026.

Martha is currently serving on the Alumni Advisory Council for Yale School of Art, is a part of the Advisory Panel for The Yale Quantum Institute A-I-R Program and is a Trustee for The Tides Institute & Museum of Art. Her work is in the public collections at the main branch of The Boston Public Library, Boston, MA, Chapman University, Orange, CA, Nuffield College at Oxford University in the U.K. and in the collection of Central Michigan University. She continues to collaborate with Marion Belanger on art projects relating to the natural environment and the climate crisis , and Margaret Roleke on artworks addressing gun violence in America, and has her studio at the historic Erector Square in New Haven Connecticut.

When she is not making art, Martha travels the world, writes for Rootsworld Magazine, and is on the radio at WPKN FM, streaming out of Bridgeport CT.

ABOUT THE GALLERY AT STILL RIVER EDITIONS

The Gallery at Still River Editions has hosted national and regional photographers and artists since 1989. In spring 2011, after a brief hiatus from exhibiting new work, the gallery returned to hosting up to four exhibitions a year. The Gallery's mission is to show traditional and digital prints of photographs and fine artwork, and to be a center of creativity and connection in the Danbury area. 

The Gallery at Still River Editions is open during normal business hours 8:30 am - 5 pm Monday through Friday, and during posted hours for special events. The Gallery does not accept unsolicited submissions at this time.