May 2014: a limitless existence
The Harrison Center for the Arts and Financial Center Federal Credit Union are proud to present a limitless existence - new work by Susan Hodgin in the Harrison Gallery. Hodgin, an Indianapolis native and HCA studio artist, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Montana, Missoula and her MFA in Painting from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her work is collected and shown across the country. From the artist's website: Exploration, expedition, and the discovery of the new is important in my work. It is in new places that I discover new emotional territories. It is the memory of place that I bring into the studio to create my paintings . . . My paintings are not landscapes but are maps of my experience in a landscape. I build up the surface of my canvases like time builds up the surface of the Earth. I paint images, symbols, and brushstrokes. These layers are randomly placed without regard to the next layer. They can only respond to past and present, and have no notion of how they will affect the future. I draw lines into the terra of the painting. I create forms. I create elevations, and I create texture. I create scars. These lines respond to the surface beneath them. The painting ends sometimes with the oil paint and the oil pastels, but in its dialogue with the past/previous layers, it will take the painting into a full cycle. A prehistoric red will show through to the surface, charcoal dust will tint a white field, and a smooth, matte area will reveal the texture of the surface like a scar on the canvas. Black circles will show through a transparent area of the oil paint like an ancient sacred ritual-place abandoned long ago. Our natural landscapes are rapidly changing and diminishing, and our connection to them is weakening. My paintings are an attempt to map, chart, and record my reactions to nature, both near and far.
Hodgin's work can be seen at an artist reception and open studio night, Friday, May 2 from 6 to 10pm. Also that night:
In Gallery No. 2 - Herron School of Art + Design seniors Jennifer Jackson and Eli Edwards present their senior thesis exhibition, Interchange. In the City Gallery - Looking Glass:Through the Lens of Mary Lyon Taylor - Elizabeth Guipe Hall has created encaustic collage incorporating photos taken taken in the early 1900s by Mary Lyon Taylor. Over 400 glass plate negatives from Taylor's work were discovered in the attic of her Herron Morton home in the 1980s and were acquired and preserved by the Indiana Historical Society. In the Gallery Annex - Mother Artist Project (MAP) - new work by Erin Hüber. MAP is a project that documents the lives of mother artists behind the scenes. In the gym - Real, imagined, remembered - an installation by Michael Helsley. Helsley's work is "based largely on my interpretation of memory and can be viewed as individual pieces or as part of a larger lot, allowing the viewer's perspective to become the primary factor in their experience. The facets of memory and perception are intertwining; there are memories as I remember them, as someone else has perceived them and relayed them to me, and then there is documentation that can tell us about the event. It is our relationships to memory that I find most interesting." In Hank & Dolly's - Annex - new work by Herron School of Art + Design seniors, Lane Decatur and Amanda Hudson.
The work hangs through May 30th.
The Harrison Center's 32 working artists welcome First Friday attendees into their studios this month, one of four annual open studio nights (March, May, September and December).
In the Sound Cave, Liz Janes performs at 7 and 9pm and Brandon Lott performs at 9:30pm.
Image courtesy of the artist: Faceless #3, Susan Hodgin, oil on canvas.
With support from: Financial Center, ArtPlace America, the Arts Council of Indianapolis, the Indiana Arts Commission, INHP, Christel DeHaan Family Foundation, Allen Whitehill Clowes Foundation, the Indianapolis Foundation, Sun King Brewery and Amy McAdams Design.
Member, IDADA (Indianapolis Downtown Artists and Dealers Association), www.idada.org