July 18
Third Thursday Exhibition Openings and Gallery Talk: Lauren Mabry
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, 724 South 12th Street
Opening night: 6-9 p.m.
Bemis Center, www.bemiscenter.org
Lauren Mabry’s work seems pretty raw. She doesn’t hold back from using brilliant color to dissect right through her ceramic pieces, provoking the question of intended emotion, as seen in her work “Split Open Cylinder.” Clearly visible is Mabry’s command of ceramics, which she developed while earning her MFA in Ceramics from the University of Lincoln. Mabry’s art on the surface can look wan and worn, but the color and texture are rich. Mabry describes her work as intuitive, and it shows. “Curved Plane” has a lot of color dripping and mixing going on, but it seems she had some idea in mind how to let the cool colors flow with browns while her artist “sixth sense” took care of the rest. Her work achieves form, even if it is loose form, as sometimes goes with abstract art. Each ceramic piece has a strong focal point. The yellows in “The Center Piece” follow no exact pattern, but the large, curved blue dripping shape pulls the viewer right in to the heart of the work. Expect Mabry’s talk to shine some light on abstract form, color, focal points and how to go about art with a loose plan in mind and plenty of room for intuition.
—Paul Heft