ABH#6/Mary Addison Hackett

1968. It Was a Beautiful Cake. No Moths, 2014,
Two panels, oil on linen/oil on canvas, 16 x 14 inches each

“Thus the hankering for houses is often a desire for a life, and the fervency with which we pursue them is the hope that everything will be alright, that we will be loved, that we will not be alone, that we will stop quarreling or needing to run away, that our lives will be measured, gracious, ordered, coherent, safe.” ~Rebecca Solnit, “Inside Out”

I’ve spent every decade of my life as an artist in a different region: Southeast, Midwest, West Coast. I’ve lost track of how many houses and studios. I held yard sales with every move, anticipating a lighter footprint along the way. I am in the South again. I wasn’t sure I’d stay. Even now as I write this and Google “storage units,” I wonder whether I am nomadic by nature or if I take secret pleasure in being bound by the objects I currently tend to from eras past.

The recent paintings are the result of field work and intense observation. Each canvas becomes a surrogate for objects, memories or situations up for parole. The finished painting becomes another object, but with repetition comes detachment.  For Anywhere But Here, I baked a cake from a family recipe, and polished a sideboard— two seemingly incongruent activities that resulted in the diptych, 1968. It Was a Beautiful Cake. No Moths.  During the actual process of painting, there is no narrative and no objective other than to document the scene in front of me. Shadows shift, the light changes, I move to the left or the right. Everything is in flux. Within these small acts of negotiation, time falls away and I feel most at home.  ~Mary Addison Hackett


We came across Mary Addison Hackett's work at a big, hodgepodge group show in Los Angeles a couple years back; a show were everyone tries to overshadow the next artist.  On our way out, we spotted a little corner area we neglected to visit. Hiding out here were a cluster of quiet yet sneakily persuasive paintings by Mary Addison.  The wall flowers of the show.  We were hooked!

Mary Addison Hackett is a Nashville-based painter who has recently returned to the South after an extended leave of absence.

artist link

ABH#5/William Conger

William Conger, Mappa Mundi, Gouache on Rag Paper, 8 inches diameter, 2014.

William Conger’s paintings are snapshots of a world going too fast…Each work, however, includes little, hidden moments of hope and clarity – his visions convey the sites and sounds of an individual grappling with so much around him, determined to make some sense of it all.  William Conger makes art in Chicago.  Chicago is lucky to have him.

From the artist:

English Medieval artist, map maker and chronicler, Benedictine Monk Matthew Paris (c.1200-1259) made symbolic “T-O maps” of the world. They were circular maps divided horizontally through the middle and then vertically from the center to the bottom. The exact center represented Jerusalem while the upper half represented Asia (including the Garden of Eden; the lower left represented Europe and the remaining lower right represented the northern coast of Africa). Surrounding the circumference, the (flat?) earth was water and, beyond that, Heaven and Hell. Amazingly, such abstract maps may have been used for travel, as for crusaders. Providing only a hint of geography, the T-O maps guided by means of symbolic notations that were intended to evoke much fuller verbal knowledge based on experience and scripture. Matthew Paris said he drew so that “the ear hears what the eyes may see”.

My Mappa Mundi, for the “Anywhere But Here” exhibition freely uses Matthew Paris’ T-O map format. My abstract shapes and textured colors are intended to imply that abstract painting also evokes a personal language or narrative that may explain an image as if it were something else even though it maps nothing in the world.

artist link

Where is the “here” than which it would be preferable to be anywhere but?

“We are all humiliated by the sudden discovery of a fact which has existed very comfortably and perhaps been staring at us in private while we have been making up our world entirely without it.” -- George Eliot, "Middlemarch"

ABH#4/Laura Sharp Wilson

The I Want to be Somewhere Else Option, 2007, 38" x 38", acrylic, graphite and collage on Unryu paper mounted on wood panel.

Over the past fifteen years Laura Sharp Wilson has been making obsessive, flat, tangled images on mulberry paper about being in this chaotic, contradictory world.

artist link

ABH #3/Amanda Church

Magic Castle, 2010, oil on canvas, 72" x 80"

"The reason I made so many paintings about LA is now becoming clear through the difficulty I am finding in articulating what I love about the city. Apart from its newness to this born-and-bred New Yorker, along with the expansiveness and a pleasure-oriented culture, something about the city always fills me with an inexplicable sense of joy and freedom. Everyday activities like driving along the freeway always seemed strangely special. Magic Castle's eponymous name comes from one of the handful of Hollywood-area motels where I have spent time over the past few years. I did a series of drawings of the view from my balcony, which spawned this particular painting. There are other works which reference different locales and architecture, foliage, swimming pools, and even a Surrealist-influenced self-portrait as a sun-drenched, secret West Coaster."-- Amanda Church

... you got that special kind of sadness
you got that tragic set of charms
that only comes from time spent in Los Angeles
makes me wanna wrap you in my arms...

(from the song Time Spent in Los Angeles by Dawes)

artist link

ABH Traveler #2: Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois, Cell (The Last Climb), 2008. Steel, glass, rubber, thread and wood, 151-1/2 x 157-1/2 x 118 inches. Collection National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: Christopher Burke - See more at: http://www.artcritical.com/2010/06/18/the-grace-of-silence/lb/#sthash.UoKbIsBv.dpuf

Louise Bourgeois, Cell (The Last Climb), 2008. Steel, glass, rubber, thread & wood, Collection National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Louise Bourgeois, Cell (The Last Climb), 2008. Steel, glass, rubber, thread and wood, 151-1/2 x 157-1/2 x 118 inches. Collection National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: Christopher Burke - See more at: http://www.artcritical.com/2010/06/18/the-grace-of-silence/lb/#sthash.UoKbIsBv.dpuf

Louise Bourgeois, Cell (The Last Climb), 2008. Steel, glass, rubber, thread and wood, 151-1/2 x 157-1/2 x 118 inches. Collection National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: Christopher Burke - See more at: http://www.artcritical.com/2010/06/18/the-grace-of-silence/lb/#sthash.UoKbIsBv.dpuf

Louise Bourgeois, Cell (The Last Climb), 2008. Steel, glass, rubber, thread and wood, 151-1/2 x 157-1/2 x 118 inches. Collection National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo: Christopher Burke - See more at: http://www.artcritical.com/2010/06/18/the-grace-of-silence/lb/#sthash.gtVeT5Kn.dpuf

Where is the “here” than which it would be preferable to be anywhere but?

"You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Great Gatsby."