MANCHESTER, NH.- Museum visitors will be absorbed in an imaginary landscape of dazzling color and light when they enter Cristi Rinklin’s new environmental artwork created specifically for the Currier Museum of Art. Boston-based artist Rinklin combines hand-painting and digital technologies for this immersive installation inspired by a floor-to-ceiling wall of windows in the Currier’s Putnam Gallery. The museum’s collection of 19th century American landscape paintings also inspired Rinklin’s project, titled “Diluvial.”

Billowing cloud and meandering waterfall forms in blue, green and purple wrap across the large expanse of windows and nearby walls, surrounding visitors in an awesome spectacle of nature’s destructive forces. Light pours through the window, and much like stained glass, projects colored imagery into the gallery. Nearby walls – completely covered in patterns that evoke historic wallpaper – continue the immersive effect and transport visitors to a world beyond the confines of the architecture.

Rinklin’s preliminary sketches and studies for her installation are on view in the museum’s Discovery Gallery. Visitors are able to see the artist’s hand-worked paintings that she scanned and combined in the computer to create the window screen composition and learn more about her inspiration from historic artworks.

The Currier’s Contemporary Connections series features new work by early- and mid-career artists from New England, made in direct response to the museum’s collection and architecture. These projects offer visitors expanded perspectives on contemporary art making and invite visitors to experience dynamic linkages between past and present art practices and cultural history.