March 29 – May 11, 2019
Exhibition Opening and Welcoming Reception for Creative Growth’s New Executive Director: Friday, March 29, 5-8pm
Live Music by: Emerson & Son
Members’ Preview: Friday, March 29, 11am-1pm
Creative Growth is pleased to present “Bodies,” an exhibition of paintings, drawings, and sculptures from the Creative Growth studio that depict, engage, and consider the human body. Join Creative Growth at the opening reception of “Bodies” on Friday, March 29, to meet the artists and welcome Creative Growth’s new Executive Director, Elizabeth Brodersen.
As a subject, an aesthetic interest, an exploration of form and function, or a means to explore the self and the other, the human figure provides timeless artistic fodder. Many artists in the Creative Growth studio are drawn to classic portraiture. Kim Clark transforms the pages of magazines into celebrity portraits and Franna Lusson uses color to suggest the inner life of her seated figures. The anonymous figures in Dan Hamilton’s and Ron Veasey’s paintings become distillations of color, planes, and shapes in the artists’ hands. For Hamilton, ground and figure become one, distinguished only by his bold lines. Face-forward and expression-driven from the neck up, the bulk of the bodies in Ron Veasey’s paintings are graphic to the point of striking abstraction.
The body is fundamental to Aurie Ramirez’s practice; her watercolor compositions feature nude figures and explore sexuality and fetishism. Delicate in technique but bold in content, Ramirez’s work is full of duality – intimacy and separation, power and vulnerability, and the body as subject and object. Casey Byrnes, on the other hand, confidently transforms bodies into objects. Wryly depicting male anatomy, his ceramic planters bare clever drainage systems.
From our permanent collection, Carl Hendrickson’s chair is also functional sculpture; constructed by the artist for his particular movement patterns as a result of Cerebral Palsy, the chair as a work of art blends aesthetic expression with rare insight into another individual’s experience of their body.
