Metropolitan State University announces a new art exhibit

Metropolitan State University Third Floor Gallery is pleased to present Domestic/Landscape.

The exhibit opens Thursday, Oct. 13 with a reception from 4–7 p.m. and the show continues through Friday, Nov. 4. Gallery hours are Mondays–Thursdays, 11 a.m.–7 p.m.; and Fridays–Saturdays, 11 a.m.–4 p.m. The gallery is located in the Library and Learning Center, 645 East Seventh Street, Saint Paul.

This exhibition features the lyrical fiber art of Mary Hark, Saint Paul, and Teresa Paschke, Ames, Iowa. Although one artist works in manipulated handmade papers and the other uses surface design techniques on cloth, their work shares some common threads. Each artist quietly contemplates their physical surroundings and life experiences. References to home and land are abundant. Each artist elegantly abstracts the imagery, often accentuating pattern, texture and color.

Reflecting on her processes and subject matter, Hark said, “This work considers the traces we leave on the materials we live with. Elusive marks, stitched trails, saturated, skin-like surfaces, refer poetically to the tenuous and transitory nature of human experience. The work embraces both the ordinariness of a blanket, curtain or other domestic cloth, as well as ideas of place and time that maps suggest.”

Similarly, Paschke said, “Recent compositions combine “found” and fabricated cloth, pieced together and reworked to suggest a kinship between rational and organic order, making reference to both culture and nature. Working within the context of landscape, my work contains many contrasts—nature/culture, urban/rural, public/private, male/female and concrete/abstract. In particular, references to agronomy—caring for the land and community, and domesticity—caring for the home and family—are intermingled to suggest complementary aspirations and to document ideas about place that are both public and private.”

For more information, contact Erica Rasmussen, gallery director, at 651-793-1631.

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