by Mary A. McCunn & Jean Barnes Downs
Arts at Canal Place - Featured Artists
December 3, 2009 - January 9, 2010
Opening Reception w/ refreshments: Saturday, December 5, 2009
Hours: 6 - 8 pm
Arts at Canal Place, Cumberland, MD
http://www.artsatcanalplace.com/
(301)777-8199
Along with some of what you normally see from Mary, will be a strong presence of steel in her jewelry and sculpture. The typical feel of her current works will be there, but with a new and occasional soft direction, by incorporating wool and other softer materials into her work. She will utilize her metal techniques, presenting work that has both a soft natural and organic feel, while also blending it with a harder edge using geometric shapes and harder lines. As in nature, these two usually can be found together, the soft fuzzy baby chick awaiting feeding in a hard branchy nest or perhaps the soft flowing hay around a piece of farm equipment or a steel metal bridge or especially a lamb by a steel barbed fence. Always present is this natural hard and soft pairing.
Jean Barnes DownsPlanting Roots
Monotype with pastel
http://www.solitudestudio.com/
Downs' monotypes will feature strong simple abstract compositions with blocks of color and variations of hard and soft edges suggesting tender plants growing in a rock crevasse or water cascading over solid stone. Geometric shapes will be offset with the flowing contour line of drawing as she plays with mixing mediums incorporating pastel and the printing process of chine collé. Ever present are her multiple layers of color and texture drawing the viewer into each piece to seek out a story hidden there.
