Assembled Visions: Shelle Barron, Geoff Beadle, Fred Scruton, Terry McKelvey
November 9, 2015, Erie, Pennsylvania – The Erie Art Museum is pleased to present a new Main Gallery exhibition, Assembled Visions: Shelle Barron, Geoff Beadle, Fred Scruton, Terry McKelvey, on view in November 28 through March 26, 2016. Assembled Visions explores the creative process by bringing together the varied work of four regional artists: Shelle Barron, Geoffrey Beadle, Terry McKelvey and Fred Scruton. Rather than having a single 'Moment of Inspiration,' artists typically engage in a complex open-ended process, where a series of experiments and the aggregation of choices made produce an unexpected outcome.
An opening reception will be held on Gallery Night, Friday, December 5 from 7 to 10 p.m.
Barron designs and prints her own digital imagery for raw material, and then cuts and pastes it by hand into a new re-contextualized whole with multiple layers of meaning and material. Beadle's images collage the layers of private spaces onto a two-dimensional picture plan of uniquely stylized figures suspended in emotion. McKelvey breaks down three-dimensional reality into painterly planes of light and color while rendering figures of disquieting ambiguity. Scruton, a photographer, travels extensively throughout the country to document mostly "outsider" artists and the art environments they often build around themselves.
The exhibition includes videos of the artists' discussion their working methods. Artworks and art environments are conceptually and physically constructed by their makers, and assembled visions celebrates both the process and the products of that journey. Visitors are invited to simply enjoy the results and interpret the meaning on their own terms.
SHELLE BARRON
Help the Bombardier. I'm the Bombardier
My work provides me with a divining rod. Experimentation affords me the opportunity to discover something both unknown and remembered, beyond the trappings of my overactive habits of mind. Working, I endeavor to process an inner life and reconcile with a seemingly chaotic and sometimes senseless larger world. Surrounded by fragments, I assemble and re-assemble until some kind of inner truth appears, however transitory and ephemeral. I collect fragments of everything—imagery, writing, music, poetry, philosophy, news reports and commentary, chance remarks by a close friend. Inundated by the volume of this collected material, I begin to make "sentences," then paragraphs of visual material by selection and juxtaposition. Edited, then filtered through a variety of digital and traditional media, something begins to emerge. If I find myself working within a tradition (ie: collage), I attempt to subvert the dogmatic policies of the tradition while at the same time honoring my heroes in the genre.
GEOFFREY BEADLE
Studio #5: Interaction #2
In my narrative images, my goal is to develop interactions of figures (typically my wife and me) that suggest layers of content. These are arranged in the space of our shared studio and explore a broader artist/ model relationship as well as our personal relationship. I compose these pictures with the goal of engaging the viewer in dynamic design, using the lyrical positioning of figures, shifting perspective of architectural space, and strategic arrangement of pattern, texture, color, and light. In developing all of my images, I work from a combination of direct observation and photographic sources. This allows me to fully explore an array of potential compositions, perspectives, and degrees of proportional distortion as I work, and is particularly useful in my investigation of illusory three-dimensional form and space. Although each subject is comprised of multiple visual sources, I intentionally obscure this process of compilation, attempting to create images that are seamlessly unified and convincingly real.
TERRY MCKELVEY
Studio View: Planes and Light V
I am fascinated by the manner in which composition, color, and paint application combine to affect the manner in which form, volume, light, and space are depicted within the picture plane. The degree to which individual works appear realistic, expressionistic, or abstracted varies, depending on my response to the forms I observe and what I am trying to convey. I attempt to capture the dynamic tensions or contradictions in spaces and forms, which largely reflects the manner in which I perceive and experience my visual surroundings. In my figurative paintings and, to a lesser degree, in the still lifes I arrange, I attempt to infuse the image with some existential question or conundrum. However, I prefer the suggestion of content to something more obvious or literal. I typically find that enigmatic images have a greater capacity to feel compelling and universal, and I seek that quality in the images I construct.
FRED SCRUTON
Billy Tripp's Mindfield, Brownsville, TN 2013
Embracing the "truth is stranger than fiction" tradition of street photography, this documentary project celebrates the expressive vitality of mostly self-taught artists working outside the mainstream of contemporary art. Shaped less by the influences of mass-media and the academy, their built-environments and artworks reflect the artists' own lives, cultural histories, and inner-musings. Arising from the deep human instinct to communicate through art, their often ephemeral works reveal a rich, but passing legacy of American culture. Some of the best picture ideas have come from the artists themselves, and specific photographs are sometimes planned more than a year in advance. Through this process of collaborative documentation, the project intends to help preserve the artists' transient visions, and break through the confines of one imagination.
Featured images (see Dropbox Link): https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7h4n233ku83hpcx/AAA5tOIxzDJvmDOKZ_56Qs6da?dl=0
Figures:
Shelle Barron: One Train May Hide Another, 2015, Digital collage and mixed media on canvas
Shelle Barron: Help the Bombardier. I'm the Bombardier, 2015, Digital collage and mixed media on canvas
Geoffrey Beadle: Studio #5: Interaction #2, 2000-2008, Oil on canvas
Geoffrey Beadle: Thirty-six Weeks, 2010-2015, charcoal and pastel on Stonehenge
Terry McKelvey: Elegy, 2015, Oil on canvas
Terry McKelvey: Studio View: Planes and Light V, 2011, Oil on canvas
Fred Scruton: Billy Tripps Mindfield, Brownville, TN, 2013, Chromogenic print
Fred Scruton: Joe Minter, Birmingham, AL, 2013, Chromogenic print
Artists Contact Information:
Shelle Barron
cell: 814.450.4302
shellebarron@gmail.com
Geoff Beadle
814.732.2543
gbeadle@edinboro.edu
Terry McKelvey
work: 814.732.1155
cell:814-452-1597
tmckelvey@edinboro.edu
Fred Scruton
814.756.3557
fred@fredscruton.com
About the Erie Art Museum
The Erie Art Museum anchors downtown Erie's cultural and economic revitalization, occupying a group of restored mid-19th century commercial buildings and a modern, 'Green,' 10,500 square foot expansion. The newly expanded Museum marks the first LEED-certified building in the region, soon to be complete with a planted rooftop.
The Museum maintains an ambitious program of changing exhibitions annually, embracing a wide range of subjects, both historical and contemporary and including folk art, contemporary craft, multi-disciplinary installations, community-based work, as well as traditional media.
The Erie Art Museum also holds a collection of over 8,000 objects, which includes significant works in American ceramics, Tibetan painting, Indian bronzes, contemporary baskets, and a variety of other categories.
The Museum offers a wide range of education programs and artists' services including interdisciplinary and interactive school tours and a wide variety of classes for the community. Performing arts are showcased in the 25-year-old Contemporary Music Series, which represents national and international performers of serious music with an emphasis on composer/performers, and a popular annual two-day Blues & Jazz Festival.
The Erie Art Museum, café, and gift shop is open Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday 11 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sunday, 1-5 p.m. For additional visitor information, visit online at www.erieartmuseum.org or call 814-459-5477.
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