Monday, July 16, 2012

Pam Douglas, Julienne Johnson, Camey McGIlvray July 17 - August 11, 2012


Opening Reception: Saturday, July 21, 2012,5-8 p.m.
Conversation with the Artists: Wednesday, July 25, 2012, 7-8 p.m. Moderated by Ezrha Jean Black - Staff Writer Artillery Magazine


Pam Douglas The Life of Fire
In her latest exhibition, artist Pam Douglas celebrates the creative force that explodes from earth’s most destructive element. The Life of Fire is the second of three in an elemental energy series engaging with water, fire, and wind. These fire images reach beyond the surface using experimental textures ranging from 3-dimensional layers of canvas to thin plastics and transparencies. According to Douglas, by working with the spirit of transformation, painting fire led to transforming the painting mediums themselves. These elemental energies thus express a sense of wonder, creating a veil between seen and unseen.

Julienne Johnson T O U C H M E T O U C H Y O U 
Julienne Johnson’s latest body of work, T O U C H M E T O U C H Y O U, embodies the spirit of her previous Ashes For Beauty series, in which memory, texture, and fleeting connections to the world around us inform our very place within it. T O U C H M E T O U C H Y O U, was further inspired by Johnson's recent journey to Doha, Qatar, where her work was presented along with thirteen international artists. Johnson’s personal experience with Middle Eastern culture and the unsettling emotions she encountered while in Doha, has found it's way into the work: we see a mix of various materials, pigment transfers and collage shaping itself into memories of words and presences. Communication - the first step toward empathy - is at the heart of Johnson’s work. In a world where casual interactions are conducted more and more through the curtain of anonymity afforded by technology, T O U C H M E T O U C H Y O U embodies a yearning for a fuller understanding of those we encounter, though often only briefly, in transit. These paintings are the instruments of Johnson's reaching out. Added to, reduced, and ultimately refined, they are about what we try to remember; those brief moments of genuine affinity to another we cannot easily forget.

Camey McGilvray Upheaval
Camey McGilvray’s new show, Upheaval, pays tribute to the avant-garde artists of the early 20th century who have had an enormous impact on modern art and who have informed her own work as well. McGilvray uses bright colors, flat planes and abstract shapes to create wood and metal sculptures that echo the spirit of artists of this period, such as Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp. By creating three-dimensional mixed media works, McGilvray adapts modernist fragmentation one step further, crossing the divide between the artwork and the viewer. This unification of space brings McGilvray’s art into our own reality and explores the dynamic relationship between art and life for which these early 20th century artists paved the way.

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