How to go
What: Mixed media by Casey Snyder and photography by Margaret P. Wright
Where: Sinclair Community College’s Burnell R. Roberts Gallery and the Works on Paper Gallery, both in Building 13 (at Fifth and Perry streets) of the downtown Dayton campus
When: Through Feb. 3
Hours: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays
More info: 937-512-2253 or www.sinclair.edu/arts/galleries
Collage is a favorite go-to process for two artists now showing their works at two galleries at Sinclair Community College in Dayton.
For Casey N. Snyder of Gaithersburg, Md., mixed-media paintings in her “Investigations of the Residual” series “unfold parts of a story in a fragmented way.” She is exhibiting works in the Burnell R. Roberts Gallery.
“Almost Out the Door: Stories of Adolescence” by Margaret Wright of Chicago also contains fragments. She recombines contemporary portraits and collaged panoramas from digital photographs. Her works are being shown in the Works on Paper Gallery.
Sinclair gallery coordinator Pat McClelland said Snyder and Wright are “two artists who produce work of a narrative quality but for whom composition, and the act of composing, remain paramount.”
Casey N. Snyder
“The Raft” by Snyder is a large-scale oil and mixed media on panel. The viewer will tend to look for meanings and cohesiveness among the collaged images in the overall composition. If and when that fails, he or she will just enjoy the melding of color, line, obscurity and form.
“I am interested in how we respond to moments that we are unsure of,” Snyder said. “I use collage as a process of collection and isolation to explore time through enigmatic plots. Using a process of erasure, recreation and dissection, I force the elements to cohabit the same loosely defined space and create logic of their own.”
One of her untitled works appears to be two figures in intimate conversation. But through obscuring and competing visual elements, the viewer can’t be certain.
Snyder received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from Ashland University, Ohio, and her Master of Fine Arts in painting from Kendall College of Art & Design in Grand Rapids, Mich. She lives and works in the Washington, D.C., metro area as an adjunct professor at Montgomery College and Frederick Community College. She also works at Glenstone, a contemporary art museum in Maryland.
Margaret Wright
Wright is a lifelong Chicagoan with “an enduring interest of what happens over time between people.” She heightens the suspense with unconventional cropping and deliberate focal points. Her works are as much about what’s shown, as what is not shown.
For example, “Graduation” evolved from a family party celebrating her niece’s high school graduation. The perceived moment in time didn’t really happen; it’s just a compilation of various time frames. Heads and shoulders have been cropped from the younger subjects, with the focus on the dad’s expression.
“I’m interested in the tension caused by the exhausted expression of the father figure and the anxious look in the mother figure’s eyes, and the casual stance of the young people in the image,” Wright said. “It was reassembled from many frames of the party.”
In “The Boyfriend,” similar themes emerge. The collective appears to be disjointed. The scene was taken from a series of images of her son’s friend’s rock band rehearsal.
“They needed publicity pictures,” said Wright, who is an adjunct professor of photography at Columbia College — Chicago. “This montage makes it look like something is happening between the girl and the boy in the middle ground. It wasn’t the case at the time, but later came true.”
Wright is a founding member of the Stella Women’s Collective and the Standard Usage Project Artist’s Group. She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Chicago and her Master of Fine Arts from Columbia College — Chicago.
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