Complete Run Turok, Dinosaur Hunter (#1-#12, July’93-June’94)

NEW ORLEANS – Heriard-Cimino Gallery presents Between the Pages, mixed sculptures by Aaron McNamee. This Opening is in conjunction with Whitney White Linen Night and will be on view August 4 through September 24, 2012. A reception to meet the artist will be held on Saturday, August 4th, from 6 until 9 p.m.  The public is invited.  Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 until 5, or by appointment.

This exhibition could not be more timely! Aaron McNamee presents one entire and complete year of the Times-Picayune daily newspaper, presented month by month in individual panels – a premonition perhaps of things to come. The New Orleans newspaper as we have known it, first established one hundred seventy-five years ago, has now become extinct – the morning ritual of New Orleanians gone, as well as the artist’s performative daily ritual of utilizing the city’s daily newspaper to create his sculptures.

About the Exhibition:  The printed words and images of newspapers, magazines, and comic books is a primary component in McNamee’s work.  His fastidious building of his sculptures page by page, leaf by leaf, paper and glue, becomes blurred, denying any specific information of content. The colors and words intermingle, bleeding through layer upon layer. The result, a painting without paint. McNamee utilizes the New Orleans Times-Picayune, complete years of American Rifleman, Mother Earth News, Road and Track, Smithsonian and The Incredible Hulk, Legends of the DC Universe, and Professor Xavier and the X-Men.

The labored repetition of aligning and gluing each piece of paper seems to be a kind of meditation. The viewer experiences the alchemical result, the transmutation of the familiar into the sublime.

Aaron McNamee received his undergraduate degree from Eastern Oregon University and his M.F.A. from University of New Orleans. Since his moving to New Orleans five years ago, the artist has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions. This is his first solo exhibition at Heriard-Cimino Gallery. The artist lives and works in New Orleans, LA.

Heriard-Cimino Gallery website:

http://www.heriardcimino.com/current_x/cx1.html

The exhibition opens Friday, October 5 with a reception for the artist from 6-8pm in the gallery located in Loso Hall.  The show will run through Friday, October 26. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday 11am to 4pm.

Stone features a collection of Don Gray’s works in both painting and drawing. His depictions of rocks and sky can be seen as metaphors of a larger reality, a reality beyond what we can observe.

“Indigenous peoples around the world think of the entire earth as a living organism.  Modern science increasingly corroborates that intuitive notion” explains Gray.  “It occurred to me that the only reason we think of a rock as inanimate is because its lifespan is unimaginably longer than our own. I sensed the life in these stones as metaphors of the living earth.”

Gray’s exhibit investigates the extraordinary in the ordinary. The multi-panel works make it necessary for viewer to experience the pieces incrementally and cumulatively, building an intrinsic sense of time into the work. The images are at once both vibrant and quiet, they straddle the line between representation and abstraction, and search for meaning in the most basic elements of our natural world.

Gray’s exhibition in the Nightingale coincides with the unveiling of his recently completed mural for EOU’s Inlow Hall. The mural presents portraits of 36 individuals who, as students, faculty or administrators, have had made their mark on EOU’s 83 year history. The official unveiling of the mural will take place on October 12 at 1PM in the Inlow Hall Welcome Center.

Don Gray grew up in rural Oregon and started drawing and painting at a young age. He received his Bachelor’s degree from Eastern Oregon University in 1970. Gray has painted large murals all over the U.S., illustrated books, taught workshops, won numerous awards and exhibited his work in many galleries and museums. In 2007 he began an online journal, www.dailyartwest.com, where he posts small daily paintings and commentary. His work is included in the permanent collections of the State of Oregon, The Hallie Ford Museum, The University of Washington Medical Center, the Frye Art Museum, the Grande Ronde Regional Medical Clinic, and numerous other collections both public and private.

The Nightingale Gallery is located in Loso Hall on the campus of Eastern Oregon University in La Grande, OR.  Gallery hours are Monday-Friday 11AM-4PM.  For more information please visit our website: http://www.eou.edu/art/nightingale-gallery/ or follow us on Facebook.

For me, these three paintings exist as a narrative of my higher education experience.  Diminished represents the emotion of feeling stationary and hopeless.  Suspended depicts the stage of searching freely and the guise of persuasion, and To Play in the Evening illustrates wonder and contentment.  I am developing an understanding of these stages as I make choices regarding my education.  This work acts to continuously remind myself not to be consumed by stages in this cycle.

To Play in the Evening  acrylic on canvas 12”x15”

Suspended  acrylic on canvas 12”x15”

Flounder and the Soul  steel, rubber and oil on paper 16″ x 10″ x 3″

Can you make yourself happier just by smiling? What if you could get rid of a headache or think more clearly just by altering the look on your face?

This body of work started with my ideas of imaginary body systems that would be able to alter a person’s character or influence personality. Systems that could be added or removed to make one better able to handle stress, make decisions or speak a foreign language. A system that could change the way a person interacts with others, or compatible systems that would allow people to understand each other better. The majority of this work focuses on the face, and the way that facial expressions might alter a person, physiologically and emotionally. These drawings are attempts to visualize such systems.

As I imagined new systems of the body, I also tried to rethink my way of drawing.  Formal aspects became my main focus, such as breaking up the traditional square or rectangle, creating free form wall drawings and experimenting with non-traditional drawing mediums such as wire. The wire allowed me to explore my obsession with line yet push myself to use it differently, underlining the relationship between sculpture and drawing in my work. I began to use the wall as the picture plane, cutting the paper and extending the drawn line onto the wall itself.  These formal investigations have further informed my conceptual base and continue to inspire new work.

Perch 1 mixed media

Hunting Ground mixed media

Nest mixed media

In this exploration the images became less about the photograph but more about how I became the viewer of myself. As I began to look at these images they appeared to be an abstract representation for parts of my own life. There became this sense of wonder and mystery about the images. They began to create a story, a story of struggle, of understanding the ways my own life has been divided. Questions with infinite solutions began to reference the surface of the images themselves and became a way to define those questions.

The textured surface within the images gives the sense there is something to be touched but is just a little out of reach. With eyes closed beyond this water like surface as if to be drowning in life’s decisions looking for a way out and realizing that hiding beyond the walls of life can’t go on forever. Looking beyond the wall with eyes open searching for the moment to shatter the disconnection caused by those walls in life. A search to bring worlds together.

Self Portrait pigment print on paper 20″ x 27″

Self Portrait pigment print on paper 20″ x 27″

Self Portrait pigment print on paper 20″ x 27″

Presenting Fear        While painting this pig head the skin became very soft and subtle. To me a pig head is nasty, scary and very much something that I would not touch. However, the girl’s hands are grasping it close to her red and white striped skirt. The skirt‘s pattern represents America.  The complete painting is about how our country may present fear while holding fear within.

Holding onto Life       To me, ravens are the most proud, most fearless animal around. They do what they want regardless of what others may think. Ravens play alone and with others. It seems as if they are always enjoying life. Within this painting all of those qualities are being held, perhaps too tightly. Like “Presenting Fear,” the background is a pattern of red and white stripes, representing America.

Worm 3                      The series of worms tells many tales. Mostly, I enjoy the form and color within the worms. I love catching worms and watching them move. Like the pig heads, the worms are not inviting to touch. But I believe the form invites the idea of touch.

“Holding onto LIfe ” oil on wood  16″X 16″

“Holding onto Fear” oil on wood  16″X 16″

“Worm 3″ oil on wood  11″ X 11″

Joseph Downtown

acrylic and fiber

2009

Sunrise Road

acrylic and fiber

2009

Bath Plug

acrylic and fiber

2010

My own life experiences have played a major role in this realization of the importance of these calm, meditative moments. My interest in Buddhist philosophy, in conjunction with my perception of the state of society and the world has prompted me to start focusing on the concepts of slowness, mindfulness, and meditation in my work. Last summer my car broke down and I wasn’t able to fix it for a long while. I had to walk everywhere I went. This sudden change of pace gave me a new perspective on society. I started to see how fast everything was moving, at such a mechanical pace.

There seems to an ever-increasing pressure to do everything faster, better than the rest, and not stop and think about why. I don’t mean to say that we should never hurry, work hard, be busy, or drive. These things are a part of the struggle of life. I am simply trying to express the need for the balancing of these things with slowness.

Two Old  Friends acrylic on canvas 2006

Windowsill acrylic on canvas 2006

Portrait acrylic on canvas 2006

His work involves collage techniques, while intertwining the qualities of paint and line.  He communicates his conceptual ideas by layering a variety of found materials on a rigid surface.  By using warm colors and wood stains in contrast to the immediacy of his drawings he expresses the elements of tension and joy found in fatherhood.

Jack and I Cooking, Clothes mixed media 2006

Green Family Portrait mixed media 2006

Samuel with Crayon mixed media 2006

It is vital to the concept of the work that I take what I know of each sitter personally and complement it with a superimposed medical history of a specific medical case. For instance, in Parasitic Twin I used the existing history of Egyptian born baby Manar Maged, who had been born with a partial twin, considered parasitic due to her lack of a set of her own functioning primary organs. As the case history goes, when Manar and her dependent sister were born, each had their own distinct personality and sleep patterns. But through a very directed experience of lack of stimulation, by Manar’s tenth month she was physically developed enough to withstand a separation, but the parasitic twin had gone basically comatose due to a complete lack of attention. I was so horrified by this case I reacted by considering the impact of a different outcome and applying it to my own image, subconsciously expressing my conflicted state at thetime with decisions in my career and personal life.

By mapping real and imagined identity, I wish to lead the viewer to ponder the limitations of a person, of human beings, and also their transcendence. The work is 80% internal view; I wish to show a portrait of the insides of a person.

Tim Shaving, oil on canvas, 16 x 20″, 2004-06

Loti Shaving, oil on canvas, 16 x 20″, 2005

Parasitic Twin, oil on canvas, 2′ x 3′, 2006