One-time Wyomingite and UW grad Julie McNair (shown above installing sculpture "Kudzu Man") will be featured as part of this evening's First Thursday Art Walk in Telluride, Colo. Here are details, with some background on Julie:Daniel Tucker Gallery at the Ah Haa School for the Arts, 300 South Townsend, featuring 30 pieces in “Being Human” by Julie McNair. The show reveals much about where Telluride sculptor Julie McNair is in her life and career as an artist. By technical mastery and astounding creativity, she infuses each ceramic figure with her sense of humor and joy of life. It’s an interesting crowd, this collection of recent work in her five-year-old series. Their quirky playfulness is an easy invitation to contemplate deeper issues.
“I start a piece with a specific idea, whether it’s a personal concern or more of a big picture dilemma. From that starting point,” says McNair, “I jump into the creative flow. The finished piece ends up embodying that energy.”The human form is a perfect format for turning the intangible into tangible, and is part of what makes this body of work so successful. McNair has received critical acclaim both statewide and nationally for the originality and technical innovations of this series. With agility and confidence she is able to take the skills honed over 35 years working in a variety of media and apply them, often in unorthodox ways, to her clay. Her intriguing surface textures, frequently created with the use of press molds, are enhanced by detailed painting and sealed with a post-fired patina reminiscent of cast metal sculpture.
“Being able to exhibit so many of my works in one location is such an honor,” says McNair with gratitude. “So many pieces have left my studio for competitions and galleries, never to be seen as part of the larger whole.”McNair studied sculpture at North Texas State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree; she went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in sculpture from the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyo. After graduating, McNair worked as an artist-in-residence for Northwest Community College in Powell, Wyo., until being hired as an assistant professor at Mississippi State University.
In Telluride, she owned and operated McNair Gallery for more than 17 years, representing herself and other emerging artists, and began teaching at the Ah Haa School in 1992, as curriculum and exhibitions coordinator. From attaining self-acceptance to decoding man's proper relationship with the Earth, these figures at once express core emotions and, if indeed art enjoys such power, help us bipeds ponder a nobler course.Read more about Julie McNair and her show at http://tinyurl.com/lqcv7q
Photo: Brett Schreckengost in The Telluride Watch
