Opening reception Thursday Sept. 28, 6-8p
Exhibition runs Sept. 28 – Nov. 30, 2017
Connected though a playful approach to material and subject, Garry Noland and Jeffry Mitchell create objects that celebrate (and cheekily exploit) the decorative. The pleasure of making through a laying of hands is on display. Noland and Mitchell both embrace process, resulting in works that feel immediate and authentic.
Garry Noland’s materials are charged with the residue of their previous life. Weathered styrofoam blocks, recycled cardboard, and duck tapped paint scraps are arranged into colorful and complex images and forms. Repeating patterns are organized with a formal sensibility, calling to mind the loose structures seen in the work of artists such as Minnie Sue Coleman and Lizzie Major of Gee’s Bend. Through modest transformations of material Noland employs these patterns as way to mark time, document labor, and approach beauty.
Jeffry Mitchell’s primary medium is ceramics and he is well versed in its traditions around the globe (references to Early American glazes, Pennsylvania Dutch pickle jars, asymmetrical Japanese aesthetic decisions and Chinese Foo Dogs abound). Mitchell takes a very direct approach to working, often eschewing refinements that commonly accompany many ceramic processes. The resulting pieces radiate an exuberant, unbridled immediacy. He feels that this unfettered approach is essentially relatable to our shared human experience. To explain this idea Mitchell talks about a fundamental familiarity with clay that we all carry with us from our formative years. Perhaps we came to it through playing as children making mud pies or maybe it was making pinch pots in elementary school, regardless he feels that clay is a material that is universally relatable at a very basic level.