Our world is awash in data, metrics, and analysis. As technology advances and expands, we become better at—and more obsessed with—counting, categorizing, connecting, and understanding observable phenomena. But how far can we take this?

Worcester-area artist Carrie Crane creates instruments and graphic displays that seemingly seek to know the unknowable by attempting to capture and quantify the most elusive of things: the unseen, the unheard, and the forgotten. She synthesizes the visual languages of both the arts and the sciences to explore the territories between truth and fiction, analysis and imagination, and precision and extrapolation. Crane’s attempts to grasp the fleeting and the ineffable result in eloquent abstractions with roots in the work of her forebears, the early 20th-century pioneers of non-objective painting: Hilma af Klint, Wassily Kandinsky, František Kupka, and Kazimir Malevich. Crane’s work ultimately finds truth in emotion, and underscores art’s important role in expressing and coming to grips with ambiguity.

Carrie Crane was the First Prize winner in last summer’s 83rdAnnual Regional Exhibition of Art & Craft at FAM. The exhibition is organized by FAM Director Nick Capasso.