SUMMER/FALL 2019 EXHIBITIONS
July 20, 2019 to January 5, 2020
Fresno-based artist, Nick Potter, featured new paintings created in 2018 and 2019 in this solo exhibition entitled Constructed Utopias. Potter was born and raised in London, England then moved to the United States in 1999. He is currently a Professor at California State University, Fresno.
Constructed Utopias is the artist's first one-person exhibition at the Fresno Art Museum. Potter is recognized for his supra-realistic depictions of spare interior spaces, mid-century modern furnishings, compositions of vintage social scenes, and isolated architectural monoliths in surreal settings.
The new paintings were seen for the first time in the Museum's Hallowell Gallery. They are oils on canvas; they are large format; they emote a time gone by; they tell us familiar stories while encouraging us to make up our own narratives.
Exhibition Curator: Michele Ellis Pracy, FAM Executive Director & Chief Curator
Image: Nick Potter, North to the Future, 2018, Oil on canvas, 5 1/2' x 7' and detail, Order and Progress, 2019, Oil on canvas, 5 1/2' x 7'
July 20, 2019 to January 5, 2020
Sausalito, California-based painter, Heather Wilcoxon, was the Council of 100's honoree for 2019 making her the thirty-first consecutive woman artist bestowed this award by the Fresno Art Museum. Wilcoxon has B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from the San Francisco Art Institute and is represented by the Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco. She is widely exhibited and has works in the permanent collections of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Triton Museum of Art, the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, and the Maine College of Art, among others.
Recent paintings include a focus on boats at sea including immense canvases where broken hulls and powerful silhouettes emerge off the canvas almost at our feet. Wilcoxon's exhibition included paintings, monoprints, and ceramics completed in the last few years, as well as several early paintings from the mid-1990s.
Her artist’s statement reads:
I challenge myself.
I take risks.
I am not afraid of change.
I fail a lot.
And I have learned to recognize that time, patience, and thought are part of my process.
Exhibition Curator: Michele Ellis Pracy, FAM Executive Director & Chief Curator
Image: Heather Wilcoxon, Spill, 2016, 48” x 60” and the Artist with her art, Photo courtesy of Peter Strietmann
Exhibition Support from A Friend of the Museum and John Scholefield and Kristene Petrucci Scholefield
July 20, 2019 to January 5, 2020
Painter, sculptor, and land art/installation artist, Carmen Hoyos, was born in Bogotá, Colombia and has lived, worked, and exhibited in Brussels, Paris, and Madrid over the course of her artistic life. She now resides in Fresno, establishing her home and studio here.
Hoyos' medium is plastic: hard (Plexiglas) or malleable (cellophane) which she carves, folds, paints, layers, wraps, or suspends. Her exhibitions can be gallery-confined or environmental site-specific momentary installations.
Happily, the Fresno Art Museum exhibition combines both of the artist's approaches. In the Lobby Gallery are installed wall-based works on Plexiglas she has kept in her personal collection.
The Concourse and Administration Lobbies housed new site-specific cellophane and Plexiglas works created especially for the Fresno Art Museum spaces.
The Sculpture Garden had an installation of a field of red plastic flowers.
"What matters to me is that my constructions become imprints on memory and nourish our imagination to become the personal breeding ground for future actions. Nature feeds my work."
Exhibition Curators: Michele Ellis Pracy, FAM Executive Director & Chief Curator and Sarah Vargas, FAM Curator
Image: Carmen Hoyos, Untitled works, Acrylic paint and Plexiglas, Courtesy of the Artist
July 20, 2019 to January 5, 2020
California native Catie O'Leary works in collage. Collage techniques have been around for thousands of years, but Cubist artists Braque and Picasso are often attributed with coining the word in the early 20th century from the French coller meaning "to glue." The art movements of Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism embraced collage, establishing it as an integral part of modern art. It has continued to be a prominent aspect of contemporary art. O'Leary was influenced by the work of Jess Collins (known simply as Jess) whose collages inspired her to abandon all other forms of art and dedicate herself to collage. She takes original engravings from antique books and creates intricate and whimsical landscapes woven together by layering meticulously cut out pieces of paper. Her work blends the contemporary and the classical, weaving together traditional imagery in an inventive and innovative manner to examine the relationship between the natural and human worlds.
Exhibition Curator: Sarah Vargas, FAM Curator
Image: Catie O'Leary, Visual Stories-Table, 2017, Collage with antique engravings, 10" x 9", Courtesy of the Artist and Untitled (Tower II), 2014, Paper collage, 12" x 8 3/4", Courtesy of the Artist
