ROCK SPRINGS — New WWCC Art Gallery exhibit ‘From The Place’ features work inspired by art professor’s Spanish residency Prof. Florence Alfano McEwin’s Academic Leave provided the inspiration for many of the upcoming show’s prints and paintings
ROCK SPRINGS — Wyoming artist, Florence Alfano McEwin, Ph.D., Professor of Art and Director of the Art Gallery at Western Wyoming Community College, will open an exhibition of her works, “From The Place,” on Monday, Oct. 12 at the Rock Springs campus. The show will include McEwin’s recent prints and paintings, including works undertaken during, and inspired by, her Spring 2015 Academic Leave in Spain. “From The Place” runs through Sunday, Nov. 20, and includes a reception, gallery talk and discussion on Friday, Oct. 23, from 4:30 – 6:30 p.m.
As an artist, McEwin reinvents the experiences of her surroundings into a contemporized statement within the print and paint mediums. Her works have found a reputation nationally and internationally, winning awards both for paint and print. She holds a Ph.D. in the Art of Women Artists of the 20th Century from the University of North Texas, College of the Visual Arts.
“From The Place” is McEwin’s survey of her recent work, some of which was inspired by her Artist Residency in Can Serrat, Barcelona, Spain, for which she was awarded a scholarship, during her Spring 2015 sabbatical.
“As an art maker, one works through head, heart and hands, eventually leading to one’s statement – the ART,” McEwin explains in her artist statement. “I approach painting and printing in a manner that is conscious of the materials and the applications. Within this survey of recent works are wax and oil paintings on canvas and two diverse types of hand-pulled prints – photo intaglios and collagraphs. I approach all with a very serious devotion to the purity of play whatever the medium or content.”
The photo intaglios, she says, are “revisionist works of Red Riding Hood” in which “the real, the interpreted and the imagined find their way as mixed metaphors, re-examining and reinventing content into an original form.”
“Ever present are male, female tensions considered with a playful twist of feminine empowerment,” McEwin explains. “In the making, the photo intaglios re-contextualize my pleasures of childhood play – paper dolls, books and puzzles. Ephemera of magazine imagery and story books are processed through the imagination and manipulated, embedding these prints with visual innuendos and mixed metaphors referencing memory, rhymes and jump rope songs. Layers of visual information are built up to reveal the content maintaining an allegorical narrative.”
The collagraphs in “From The Place” are carborundum and vegetation collagraph stencil prints, a method original to McEwin.
“The smaller plates were made from plant life surrounding my Can Serrat residency – a 17th-century inn on the outskirts of Barcelona, Spain – during the academic leave,” McEwin says. “The larger plate employs vegetation from Colorado. Though no longer visible in its flora form, the embedded vegetation adds an organic, tactile quality to the paper in a slightly embossed manner. The stencils originated from preliminary drawings and watercolors of roses from Can Serrat. These images were then altered into a stencil vocabulary, cut from acetate, and placed on the inked plate without intent of an edition. Each work has been pulled through the press multiple times and takes a layered approach to conception. However, unlike the photo intaglios, they deny narrative and suggest a tactile immediacy.”
McEwin also utilized stencils in her paintings, which were created with hot and cold wax, oil pigment, on canvas.
“The paintings, while emerging from the same impetus as the collagraphs, find their own way through layers of both hot and cold wax, oils and color, utilizing a stencil approach,” she explains. “The stencil in the floral paintings emerged from drawings of the courtyard roses outside my campus office window. Like the prints, the paintings are not floral replicas in color or design, so that they evolve into their own spirit and presence, independent of the observed world and referencing the color and paint.”
McEwin has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and overseas. Her international exhibitions have included the two-person show “Together and Apart” at the Earth Gallery in Kamakura, Japan, and the two-person show ”He – She” at the Brocken Gallery in Koganei, Tokyo, Japan. She has also participated in group exhibitions in Canada, the Netherlands, and Germany. Her solo U.S. shows have included exhibitions at the Center for the Arts in Jackson, Wyo., the Nicolaysen Museum of Art in Casper, Wyo., the A.I.R. Gallery II in New York City, and The Arts Center in St. Petersburg, Fla., among many others.
McEwin earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Art from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst and her Master of Art degree in Art from the University of Wyoming. She has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the scholarship award that sent her to Can Serrat, Barcelona, Spain, for her recent Artist Residency. She also received an Independent Professional Artist Grant from the Wyoming Arts Council in 2012, a Purchase Award from the Bradbury Gallery at Arizona State University in 2010, and a prestigious Painting Award from the George and Helen Segal Foundation in New Jersey in 2005, among many others.
Western is proud to present “From The Place,” by Wyoming artist Florence Alfano McEwin, from Monday, Oct. 12 – Sunday, Nov. 20 at the WWCC Gallery. The reception and gallery talk on Friday, Oct. 23, from 4:30 – 6:30 p.m. is free and open to the public. The gallery talk will begin approximately at 5 p.m. For more information, contact McEwin at [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>.
Photo: ‘From Spain’
Photo: ‘Flora’