Maine artist Carly Glovinski has opened "Into the Garden," her third solo exhibition with New York's Morgan Lehman Gallery. The show explores gardening as a parallel practice to art-making, inspired by her residency at Surf Point in southern Maine, where she discovered the overgrown grounds of Wild Knoll, the former home of author May Sarton. Glovinski planted a community garden there, the Wild Knoll Foundation Garden, and the experience led her to return to painting after a two-decade hiatus, creating acrylic works that express the experience of gardening rather than traditional landscapes.
This exhibition matters because it highlights a growing trend of artists integrating ecological and horticultural practices into their creative work, blurring the lines between art, gardening, and community engagement. Glovinski's return to painting after 20 years also marks a significant personal and professional shift, while her large-scale installations like "Almanac" at Mass MoCA and "Opelske" at Boston Seaport demonstrate how garden-inspired art can resonate in major institutional contexts. The show underscores how historical literary figures like May Sarton and Celia Thaxter continue to inspire contemporary artistic practice.