A new exhibition opening at the West Virginia University Creative Arts Center’s Laura Mesaros Gallery on Thursday, Sept. 5, features paintings by New Mexico artists Beau Carey and Cedra Wood, who took part in an Arctic Circle expedition in 2012.

Titled “Fathom Out,” the exhibition will be open through Oct. 3.

The artists will present a lecture about their work at the opening on Thursday, Sept. 5, at 5 p.m., in the Bloch Learning and Performance Hall (200A). The opening reception for the exhibition will follow at 6 p.m. at the galleries.

An expeditionary residency in the fall of 2012 took both artists above the Arctic Circle, where they traveled by tall ship around Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, only 10 degrees from the North Pole. They were among more than 20 participants on the expedition, which included artists, writers, composers, and scientists on a small ship staffed by eight crew members.

With painting kits in tow, Wood and Carey ventured into the Arctic landscape to explore, research and create. A mutual deep and abiding respect for landscape and place-based work informs their independent examinations of the relationship between humans and nature. “Fathom Out” pairs their work in order to examine the complexities of that relationship.

Carey created his series of landscape oil paintings titled “Arctic Studies” and Wood, a realist painter who keeps a journal of all her travels, recorded her adventures on the trip in a 200-page sketchbook that serves as a travelogue and a field study. She also created a series of miniature paintings that are postcard-size visual records of her adventures, with depictions of Arctic landscapes, fellow travelers, and crew.

According to Robert Bridges, curator of the Mesaros Galleries, this exhibition is part of the WVU School of Art & Design’s year-long Global Positioning Studies program, an interdisciplinary visual art and design initiative that positions students at the crossroads between a local sense of place and a global understanding of that place in the world.

“Through direct experience, the Global Positioning Studies program encourages students to engage the world as a fertile ground for art making and critical research,” he said. “In addition to GPS-related courses, the School of Art and Design weaves community and environmentally driven components into much of their programming—including exhibitions and visiting lectures.”

See more on the School of Art & Design GPS page: http://artanddesign.wvu.edu/gps.

Beau Carey received both his Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts degrees in painting and drawing from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. His work has always dealt with the question of how to represent landscape in a way that is both visually engaging and critically aware of important issues concerning land use. He says that as an artist it is his job to engage fully with his community, to allow that engagement to inform his work, and thus allow his work to spur positive action within that community. See Carey’s website at http://beaucarey.com/.

Cedra Wood received her Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from Austin College, and her Master of Fine Arts degree in painting and drawing from the University of New Mexico. She currently lives and works in Albuquerque. Her most recent solo exhibition, “That Sound Under the Floor is the Sea” focused on her art-centric travels above the Arctic Circle in 2012. The exhibition included Wood’s journal, on display alongside loose-leaf studies, photographs, works on paper and documentation of performance work in the field. See Wood’s website at http://cedrawood.com.

For more information about the Arctic Circle Project, go to the project website at http://www.thearcticcircle.org/.

Managed and programmed by Curator Robert Bridges and the WVU School of Art & Design, the Mesaros Galleries organize a diverse and exciting schedule of exhibitions throughout the year. The galleries are committed to showing experimental work that is innovative both in terms of media and content. The Mesaros Galleries and the WVU School of Art and Design also host contemporary artists of important or growing reputation who work in all media in the Lecture Series.

All Mesaros Galleries events, including art lectures, exhibitions and receptions are free and open to the public.

Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, from noon to 9:30 p.m. The galleries are closed Sundays and University holidays. Special individual or group viewing times may be arranged upon request.

For more information, contact Robert Bridges, curator, at (304) 293-2312.

-WVU-

cl/09/04/13

CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304-293-4359, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu

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