|
 Alicia
Mannix will exhibit, "Boots, Wheels and Goddesses,"
more than 45 of her latest paintings, as Nuwandart's featured
artist for July. The show opens 5 p.m. First Friday, July 6, 2001,
at 258 A Street, Suite 2, in Ashland. The mostly acrylic body
of work is a "color extravaganza," Mannix said, in her
"spontaneous expressionism" style. It will include a
22-painting series of each of the 22 characters of the Hebrew
alphabet, all done on like-sized, small canvasses on stretchers.
"They
are very powerful when they are displayed together," she
said of the series, which after the exhibit will be donated to
Havurah Shir Hadash Sunday School, where her 9-year-old son takes
classes. Mannix said she was inspired to do the letters while
studying Judaic mysticism -- the Kabbalah -- at synagogue. A
mother of three, including two in their 20s, Mannix paints true
to her own mix of heritage, with the Hebrew alphabet as a subject,
and her stylistic borrowing from Russian Orthodox art and its
themes.
"I
was fascinated by Byzantine art so I love pre-Renaissance mother
and child paintings," Mannix said. "I love the style,
where it is flat and doesn't try to show any correct anatomy."
She said the style reminds her of how a child makes art, because
it is so two-dimensional, rather than three dimensional with two-point
perspective. "In the pre-Renaissance period, they didn't
do that. They just drew what they saw." Mannix said her "spontaneous
expressionism" sprouts in her art from working the canvas
and seeing what comes out. In the 20 or so larger pieces for the
exhibit at Nuwandart, much of those have developed into "wheel"
and "boot" images, in which Mannix said she finds some
similar symbolism.
Pieces
titled "The Wheel Mother and Child," and "Mother
and Brainchild," among others -- "The Wheel Goddess"
and "The Wheel Guy" -- incorporate "wheels,"
while "Just Boot It" and "Russian Dancer"
contain boots. The images just spring from the canvas, she said.
"People always find something in it that I didn't see myself."
But the boots and wheels have meaning to her. "They are both
associated with going somewhere -- setting something in motion,"
she said. "It kind of means I'm firmly footed in who I am
and what I'm doing."
In
addition, she said, boots symbolize power and "discipline
in my life," while the wheel is "completeness and wholeness."
"Everything
is one. There is no begining, no end," she said. There is
no destination.
"Goddess
of Fertility" -- a woman giving birth – and "The Wheel
Goddess," while a new, abstract piece, which she calls "masculine"
because of its dark tones, symbolizes her own change, reflected
in its title, "Departing Estrogen," along with another,
"Menopausal Ecstasy," which showed at Jega Gallery's
"Women With Attitude" show.
Sandford
Shaman, director of the Schneider Museum of Art, a friend and
congregation member of Mannix's synagogue, said her paintings
are "unique and personal explorations into such subjects
as motherhood and womanhood, as well as themes associated with
American and Jewish culture" and "based upon a rich
palette and a deeply expressive association with the media."
Mannix
said her painting style lately has freed her to be less obsessive
with the end product when she paints. "The less I worry about
the outcome, the better it is," she said. She does worry
a little though about her website, www.aliciamannix.com, at which
she will have posted her poetry, essays, resume, artist's statement
and more than 70 of her paintings and drawings.
"It's
kind of like exposing yourself, you know?" she said. "This
is a metaphor for me taking my clothes off. But it's deeper than
that because it's sharing my creativity with the world."
She said it then opens here to the world's criticism. She said
the website's construction should be completed by Wednesday, June
27.
Mannix
currently has art at Scan/Design in Medford, Rogue's Gallery in
Gold Beach and Artique Gallery in Portland. "Boots, Wheels
and Goddesses" will show at Nuwandart through July 31.
|
