In 2023, artist Roma Devanbu spent eight months in and around Germany simply seeing and responding with the fresh eye that being a stranger in a new/old world provides. The images that resulted are served up on Pappteller zum Mitnehman - the paper plates “To Take” used by both street vendors and bakeries in many parts of Europe. The distinctive rectangular shapes and fluted corners of the plates function as frames for Devanbu's visual takeaway.
In this series of small works one can follow the artist’s perpetually hungry gaze as it samples and savors from the “all you can eat” visual feast she encountered in train stations, cathedrals, baroque palaces, contemporary construction sites, medieval villages, and on the walls of approximately 100 museums.
The exhibition includes drawings, paintings and collages in which the viewer will find bits of maps, train tickets and other travel ephemera, as well as the occasional glimmer of gold leaf.
About the Artist
Roma Devanbu earned a BFA at Carnegie-Mellon University an MFA from Pratt Institute and spent a year studying Asian Art History at the Maharashtra Sayajirao University of Baroda in India. She was a tenured professor of Fine Art at Bergen Community College in New Jersey, before relocating with her husband, Prem Devanbu, and their daughters, to Davis, California. Devanbu is an exhibiting member artist at Axis Gallery, and a studio resident at Verge Center for the Arts, Sacramento. Her work is included in corporate collections and is on permanent public display in many Northern California hospitals.
As a committed “Art Pilgrim”, Devanbu has found inspiration in museums, galleries and sites of art historic importance worldwide (28 countries and counting).