Here we are quarantined during a pandemic and this gorgeous exhibition that five of my paintings traveled to New Orleans for is now up in a museum that is temporarily closed to the public. Of course closing was necessary and it was the best decision to protect people for now. I was scheduled for a week’s visit in New Orleans and I was planning to visit with friends and colleagues and check out the hip gallery scene in this darkly rich intensely social and deeply historical city. Hopefully this is a just postponement of things to come.
In the meantime the Ogden Museum of Southern Art has provided quite a variety of online programming about the exhibition including an informal Zoom interview with myself and the curator of the exhibition, Bradley Sumrall, a walk through video tour of the show, a guided meditation featuring my large scale egg tempera painting, Above the Pack, and singular images of some of the works in the exhibition.
I’m so grateful to Bradley Sumrall for including my paintings in his curatorial vision for this exhibition. I hope that my visit will be rescheduled and the show will be open to the public before it has to depart. Below are images of my egg tempera pantings included in this exhibition. At the bottom of this post are links to the programming I mentioned above.
FROM THE OGDEN MUSEUM’S WEBSITE:
Drawing inspiration from the traditions of various cultures – Haitian Voudou, Appalachian broom-making, Calabrian silk production, Peruvian rope coiling, Congo Nkisi – the contemporary Southern artists in Entwined engage wrapping and binding as a symbolic aesthetic device, and often as a ritual practice within their work.
The technique and the symbolism of wrapping and binding in the work of these artists is as varied as the artists themselves. From the visionary allegorical paintings of the female form by Susan Jamison to the abstract textile sculptures of Sarah Zapata, there exists a common thread of ritual. For some, it is the ritual of repetitive laborious handwork. For others, it is a ritual and spiritual act of creation. Through wrapping, painting, weaving, coiling, drawing or knotting, each artist binds their own unique and thoroughly contemporary vision to an ancient, universal and very human practice.
Entwined features works by Friendswood Brooms, Jeffrey Cook, Sonya Yong James, Susan Jamison, Sharon Kopriva, Kristin Meyers, Susan Plum, Ashley Pridmore, Elizabeth Shannon, Ed Williford and Sarah Zapata.
This exhibition is curated by Bradley Sumrall, Ogden Museum Curator of the Collection.