Against the Grain

STRATA GALLERY
Against the Grain
January 04 – February 05, 2022

Reception: Friday, January 07, 2022, 5-7PM

Stephanie Jacinto, this year’s juror, selected twenty-one artists from nine different states for inclusion in Strata Gallery’s Against the Grain exhibit. The works included are against the grain in diverse ways, but the use of media is perhaps the most evident. Utilizing a wide range of materials, each artist explores complex themes of identity, time, human connection, and the environment. 

Examples include collagraph on paper, curb chunks and brick by Robbie Sugg; fritted screen-print layers on sandblasted kiln-formed glass by Alex Younger; handmade grass-paper sewn together with the artist’s hair by Julia C. Martin; and a silver gelatin print made from a cliché verre negative by Daniel Hojnacki. 

Other artworks include Jack Crouch’s hilarious take on Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps and Andrés de Varona’s Access, which continues the existential probing that made him one of Southwest Contemporary’s “12 New Mexico Artists to Know Now” and saw a full feature on his work in Pasatiempo. Julia C. Martin, also featured in Southwest Contemporary, fuses figures and environment with her works. Jenny Balisle’s Danger Owner-Operator Controlled Vaginas, molded acrylic imitation caution signs, makes witty, incisive asides on gender issues. In a gentler mode, Rosalba Breazeale’s ephemeral chemilumen photographic prints will continue to develop through prolonged exposure to light.

Through their chosen materials, each artist’s work acts as a conduit to complex ideas and relationships that challenge the viewer and create new pathways for deeper learning, relating, and understanding. There is no doubt that this exhibit will challenge the way you think about what might constitute art and how choices of media impact, social, political, existential, environmental or humanistic inquiry.

Artists: Alex Younger, Andrés de Varona, Anna Rotty, Cody Norton, Conrad A. Schwable, Daniel Hojnacki, Douglas Dale, Eric Anderson, Hannah Ramage, Houston Fryer, Jack Crouch, Jenny Balisle, Julia C. Martin, Kara Dunne, Katherine and Sarah Schirato, Lita Kenyon, Meagan Moreno, Rachael Buffet, Robbie Sugg, and Rosalba Breazeale