The Fitchburg Art Museum presents Still Life Lives!, a group exhibition that celebrates the vitality of the still life tradition and its themes of beauty, bounty, darkness, fragility and fleeting moments. Still Life Lives! features paintings from FAM’s permanent collection ~ gorgeous florals and fruits by Nell Blaine, Marc Chagall, Henri Fantin-Latour, William Harnett, Walt Kuhn, Georgia O’Keefe, and Marguerite Zorach, to name a few ~ surrounded by striking examples of the genre by contemporary artists active in the New England visual arts community.

The still life tradition ~ made popular by skillful seventeenth-century Dutch painters ~ is alive and well in twenty-first-century New England. While the specific symbols of knowledge, commerce, trade, wealth, and mortality associated with those still life masters may have changed, the desire to portray such themes has not. Still Life Lives! begins a conversation about the myriad ways artists continue to respond to, and redefine, the legacy of still life today.

For example, Elisa H. Hamilton’s small, square, mixed-media studies of apples are lively experiments in color, light, shadow, and contrast. Hamilton uses apples and other objects she finds around her apartment as a way to draw the joy and wonder she finds in the everyday. In Hamilton’s world, a pair of worn-out shoes indicates a life well danced. A sink full of dirty dishes signals a great dinner party. And though the subjects may repeat, no two Hamilton images are alike. With more than a hundred apple drawings to her credit, Hamilton recently set herself a goal to create 365 of them. The result is a project titled, An Apple A Day. When viewed separately, each apple sketch is a still life. But when hung together, all 365 become a powerful testament to the different, extraordinary ways a person can see the very same object day after day.

Mary Kocol’s photographs take the arts of floral arranging and traditional still life bouquets to new extremes. To begin, Kocol selects a variety of garden blooms and immerses them in water, guiding their placement as the liquid freezes around them. She then holds the icy blocks of frozen flowers up to the sunlight and photographs them, immortalizing these seasonal blossoms. Saturated with vibrant, swirling colors and bubbly fissures, Kocol’s images seem full of motion. But therein lies the magic of this body of work, for as Kocol exposes her subjects to the sun, the ice inevitably will begin to melt and the flowers will start to die. All that remains is the photograph.

Curated by new FAM Associate Curator Mary M. Tinti, this exhibition features the following contemporary artists: Thomas Birtwistle, Michael Bühler-Rose, Caleb Charland, John Chervinsky, Emily Eveleth, Aaron Fink, David Furman, Matthew Gamber, Cynthia Greig, Judy Haberl, Elisa H. Hamilton, Jon Imber, Catherine Kehoe, Mary Kocol, Elizabeth Kostojohn , Pat Lasch, Laura Letinsky, Catherine McCarthy, Mary O’Malley, Olivia Parker, Scott Prior, Shelley Reed, Justin Richel, Janet Rickus, Evelyn Rydz, Victor Schrager, Tara Sellios, Randal Thurston, Kathleen Volp, Deb Todd Wheeler and Kimberly Witham.

The exhibit will run through Jan. 12. The Fitchburg Art Museum is open noon-4 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Admission is $7 for adults and $5 for seniors and children 13 and older. Check the museums website for details on discounts. For more information, call (978) 345-4207 or visit fitchburgtartmuseum.org.