Crosscurrents: Art, Crafts, and Design in North Carolina North Carolina Museum of Art

1. Crosscurrents: Art, Crafts, and Design in North Carolina North Carolina Museum of Art

2. Crosscurrents: Art, Craft, and Design in North Carolina is the first time “The Mint Museum “ and the “North Carolina Museum of Art” have collaborated on an exhibition of works by the state’s artist. • “Crosscurrents” has a finger on the pulse of groundbreaking art in our state.

3. “Ghost” by David Finn

4. David Finn First reaction: A grin, a chuckle, feeling of awe Finn exhibits a novel approach to traditional ideas surrounding materials and material culture Historically, monumental marble has served to commemorate significant people, places, or events.

5. Inspired by 17th and 18th century footwear • Pays homage to a bygone era characterized by refinement and elegance • Stands as a marker, monuments to those who previously trod this earth • Standing as one of a pair, each shoe evokes a palpable absence

6. Questions they pose: Where are their mates? Was a mate ever crafted? Who was the wearer? Why was one left behind?

7. These markers offer clues: • Providing insight into the fine craftsmanship of the shoemaker • The personal taste of the shoe’s final wearer

8. Unsoiled • Devoid of wear • Beautiful • Colorlessness • Purity

9. Migration # 0304 by Susan Brenner

10. Susan Brenner1950- • Combines her interests in painting and photography • Shows to advantage her conceptual gifts • Enables her to expand upon metaphorical implication present in the rope paintings

11. She begins with photographing still life's of toys, ropes, or other familiar objects and ends with obscuring, by digital manipulation, almost all evidence of any representational element.

12. References to muscle, tissue, guts in these strange hybrid forms. • The artist stresses the physicality of the human body • There is an intentional reference to the body and its interior • An impulse toward abstraction • The surface implies movement

13. Listening Still by Marguerite Gignoux

14. Seeing with Memory by Marguerite Gignoux

15. Marguerite Gignoux1957- • Marguerite Gignoux pieces together her hand-dyed fabric along with commercial and found sections of cloth • She sews layers of material, one joined upon another • Vivid color, intense color, brilliant color coexists happily with earthen tones, shades of nature made all the more vibrant through contrast.

16. Once pieced, the cloths are then quilted in a manner she describes as" using a chicken-scratch stitch” • The stitching approach tends to unify its surface • She describes her quilting as an effort to bring together the many fabric parts, she stitches in divergent directions

17. Maja Godlewska

18. Maja Godlewska1965- • Her expressive paintings explore cycles of deterioration and regeneration. • Abstract • Refer to the human body • The body is a powerful symbol • Inspiration from 17th century rococo paintings and frescoes • Uses mixed media that includes chalk paint from her native Poland

19. The subtle stains the artist can achieve with this paint help her realize layered textures that can be as airy as clouds or as imposing as combustion. • She infuses the compositional concerns of historical painters with a more contemporary sensibility, reducing natural forms to their essence.

20. Untitled by Hayley Kyle

21. Hayley Kyle1978- • Subtle drama suffuses the painting • Small pigment-saturated landscapes • They present ambiguity and promise intimacy • Their mysterious qualities cannot be fully defined or possessed • This sustains the viewer’s attention

22. The landscapes provide sanctuary • They offer the luxury of time • A moment of focused reflection • A chance to become lost in silence and solitude

23. In these mood pieces, vaporous fog creeps into and envelops a nightscape; dust descends, blurring the boundaries between field and forest; and clouds hang in the heavens above. • Works pique interest and stimulate curiosity long after the direct experience of them is over. • They leave the viewer ensconced in a beautiful brooding

24. Sentinel Pot II “ Day in the Life” by Jennie Bireline

25. Jennie Bireline1936- • Earthenware • Represents a subtle, formal departure for her • This work celebrates the last three months of her husbands life • She pairs each Sentinel with a companion painting done by her husband

26. The Sentinel serves, in her words, as “an elegy in 3-D a small tribute to my place in his life and work, and his place in me….It continues.” • Bireline’s sentinels express the physical and emotional challenges presented by the unexpected, the uncontrollable.

27. Untitled (Colonial Portrait), Magazine Interiors Series by Page Laughlin

28. Page Laughlin1959 • Paintings of sun-dappled interiors reveal the fantasies and desires evoked by the elaborate rooms portrayed in luxury magazines. • She revels in the allure of these images: the lustrous surfaces of fine furniture, plush carpets, and rare decorative objects that offer gratification, comfort, and pleasure.

29. Simultaneously, Laughlin illuminates the paradoxical nature of such settings. • These opulent presentations of excess are seductive yet barren, representing the opposite of fulfillment- hollowness, ongoing, and even decay.

30. Laughlin builds the composition of each work by applying broad strokes of pigment she dexterously manipulates, scraping paint away and reapplying it. This gives it a multilayered texture. Spatial depth is achieved by visually scanning the strata of hues that comprise the painting. • Colonial’s portrait’s formal interior offers pictures of ancestors, perhaps landed gentry, that imply a privileged class. The furnishings are upholstered in fabric that borrows imagery for other cultures, conveying the notion of conquest.

31. Tea Bowls by Greg Scott

32. Greg Scott1969- • Greg Scott is a ceramist, painter, draftsman, and sculptor. He creates expressionist works that unite the fine and decorative arts. • Continually manipulating forma and surface, Scott create works of unusual depth. • Revealing and concealing, the vessel’s surface serves as Scott’s canvas.

33. He revels in the material and the process, spontaneously drawing in the clay and intuitively painting or spraying successive layers of Shino Glazes, various stains, earthen slips, and oxides, alternating them with a wax resist. Glimpses of surfaces left bare invite closer inspection, deeper exploration into the glaze deposits, analyses of the graphic surfaces, and discovery.

34. “For the Flag” by Anne Kesler Shields

35. Anne Kesler Shields1932- Description of the monumental collages • Provocative • Compelling • Gutsy • This series began as an exploration of the erotic nature of contemporary advertising and its relevance to art history.

36. Employing bold graphics, scale, and color, Shields confronts and captivates the viewer. In “For the Flag”, she rouses emotion and engages the intellect with her development of a new political panorama.

37. Architka Island, Alaska by Elin O’Hara Slavick

38. Her series" Protesting Cartography or Places the United State Has Bombed” is an examination of American bombing campaigns. • She begins by dropping ink on wet paper, creating soft, muted “explosions” that seep and blend to form an abstracted landscape. Playing cartographer, she overlays a map of a location the United States has bombed, using atlases, photographs, and historical texts as her guide.

39. The colors and pattern allow the works to function formally first. The political message is secondary and only becomes clear when one reads the accompanying statement that contextualizes the place, motive, and event each image illustrate.

40. All information in this slide show was taken from the book “Crosscurrents: Art, Craft, and Design in North Carolina