PRESS RELEASE
JRB Art at The Elms is featuring Beth Hammack and Andy Mattern in two solo exhibitions. The exhibitions open with an evening reception from 6:00 – 10:00 p.m. on Friday, May 5th, during the Paseo’s First Friday Gallery Walk. The exhibit can be seen during the Paseo Arts Festival Memorial Day Weekend and will close Monday, May 29th.
Celebrated Oklahoma City abstract artist, Beth Hammack has a storied career in art, jewelry and interior design. She graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, where she spent many hours in the University’s School of Art. She has also studied with private instructors from all over the world; as well as the Chicago Art Institute and the London City School of Arts.
In creating large scale statement paintings, Beth says of her practice, “I paint with freedom and abandon, creating colorful surprise mixes of unexplained relevance.” Her pieces often incorporate lightly textured painting with drawing, subtle hues, disguised symbols and barely legible writing – all combined in purposeful abstraction. Her painting technique involves building layers upon layers of paint and texture in poetic combinations reflecting the richness of her creative life and observations. For her upcoming show, Hammack has added new strong colors to her usual palette.
Hammack will offer a two-hour class on Sunday, May 14th discussing her thought process and demonstrating her layering and painting techniques. This workshop is free and open to the public.
Andy Mattern is an Assistant Professor of Photography & Digital Media at Oklahoma State University. His work has been exhibited at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe, the Lawndale Art Center in Houston, Candela Gallery in Richmond, Virginia, and the Photographic Centre Peri in Turku, Finland.
Using pictures that appear on packages of photographic paper, Mattern sands and scrapes off their recognizable logos and images before adding tape and other collage elements. Shot straight-on and printed at life-size scale, the resulting photographs operate between abstraction and hyperrealism.
Repeating this ritual with many different packages resulted in a collection of related formal compositions that resists the corporate example of art’s potential as it reconsiders the embedded meaning and creative opportunities held in the raw materials themselves.
Mattern will give a visual presentation and artist talk discussing how he came to photograph his current show on Sunday, May 21st, 2017, 2:00—3:00 p.m. This discussion if free and open to the public.