“UNDER THE COSMIC CANOPY”
New Installation Works by Julia McLain and Rose Marie Mercado
Exhibition Dates: September 8 – 24, 2018
Opening Reception: September 8, 2018 / 6-9 p.m.
Fort Worth Art Dealers Association special event: “Fall Gallery Night”
“Under the Cosmic Canopy” is a concept of installation artwork by two Dallas-Fort Worth-based artists, diverse in style, in synch in artistic dialogue, in their first exhibition collaboration.
“I have NO desire to do abstracts because that is not what motivates me to create,” says Julia McLain.
“Abstracts appeal immensely to me,” says Rose Marie Mercado.
In a cohesive gallery space at Fort Worth Community Arts Center, McLain and Mercado have produced individual themes that both correlate and complement each artist expressing her own passion. From botanicals to graphic animal whimsies, from still life settings to cityscapes, each artist invites the viewer to explore visual narratives that engage awareness of old forms and themes in new perspectives.
Inspired by vintage Victorian scrapbooks, McLain re-interprets the idea of “scraps” (called stickers today) that were glued over the pages of the lithographed designs. The scraps were applied in endlessly creative ways to collect and record personal whimsies. Using “art parts” that have been “soft sewn” in a collaged manner, McLain’s wall installation becomes an enlarged scrapbook page of the sewn designs resembling stickers against a silhouette landscape.
On birch wood panels 8 feet tall and 24 inches wide, Mercado re-imagines garden landscapes as choreographies of shadow and light. From stately tree limbs and sprawling shrubs to imperfect flowers, her abstract juxtapositions mimic nature’s fleeting poses. She uses lighting effects and its movement to capture the glow she experiences in the joy of seeing and being.
From “old world” imagery and color palettes to botanic shapes swelling with vigor and energy, Julia McLain and Rose Marie Mercado have created works that jump through perceived realities found in “Under the Cosmic Canopy.”
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Price
- FREE!
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