Diane Mortonis

For the past ten years, Justamere has been an evolving meditation on memory, place, and the quiet sanctity of routine. This retrospective gathers a decade of work inspired by a cottage on Chautauqua Lake, where I spent every summer since birth—an unassuming retreat affectionately named “Just-a-mere Cottage” by my grandmother for its vintage, bare-bones charm. Though this series has been created and exhibited exclusively in Colorado, this exhibition marks its first return to the place that inspired it—bringing the work full circle, back to where these memories began.

The sacredness of memory and the quietude of routine intermingle in my work. Through intricately cut imagery and installations of paper and fabric, memories are translated into layered compositions of light and overlapping shadows. The process of cutting, sculpting, and assembling reflects the way memory itself is constructed—fluid, selective, and often distorted.

This series is both a personal excavation and a shared invitation–to find meaning in simplicity and to cherish the quiet beauty of a moment uninterrupted, where the act of making itself becomes an act of reverence. There is a kinship in honoring the past—objects rich with patina, weathered antiquities, artful mending, creative and humble solutions. Process embeds itself in a treasured moment. It is about stepping outside of time’s relentless pace and honoring the past, not as something distant, but as something woven into the present.

Diane Martonis received her Masters of Fine Arts Degree in Sculpture from the State University of New York at Albany and her Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from the State University of New York at Fredonia. Born and raised in New York, she moved to Colorado in 2003 where she currently resides. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally and continues to create out of her studio at home.