Sunday, January 13, 2-5 pm
Alameda 6, Colonia San Antonio
free

Myth of Memories - opening

by Kathleen Cammarata

Memory is the journal of the mind, “the warder of the brain” (Shakespeare). Recollections can be linguistic or visual. Some are fact and some are fancies. For the artist the memory is a vast archive of images.

The “Myth of Memories” is an exhibition by two artists harnessing that repository in diverse ways. Annie Evans is a sculptor working in clay; Kathleen Cammarata is a drawer working in charcoal on paper.

Evans combines images of women and wild animals to create mysterious and mythical hybrids. She builds the main form in clay then attaches real animal horns to the figure’s head. The torsos are glazed a dusty green and/or a rusty brown as if they were dug up from an archeological site. Their surfaces seem to be encrusted with a past. In the piece “Memories Locked Away” the figure has a hollow space in her abdomen where a smaller figure quietly sits. Is this figure a memory of a past life? The larger figure looks wistfully into the distance, maybe into the future, cupping her hands protectively above the hollow niche. Is this memory birthing myth or vice versa?

Cammarata pursues memory through drawing. In ten diptychs called “The Memory Suite” she diagrams the concept abstractly as a type of lexicon. The left side of the drawing represents the event and the right side it’s memory. The left side is bathed in light and the right side is shrouded in darkness. Across the two planes lines of energy zigzag and ghosts of forms appear and fade. Erasing leaves subtle traces of what was, a tectonic recollection.

Evans attended Atlanta College of Art and has a graduate degree in Developmental Psychology where she studied chimpanzees, evident in her human-animal sculptures.
Her work can also be seen at Magenta Gallery.

Cammarata is a painter as well as a drawer, taught in two museums and a university. She has had numerous solo shows and awards.

Both artists’ work are on view at Esperanza Studio Sunday, January 13th from 2 to 5 pm at Alameda #6 (GPS #5) or by appointment email: katcammarata@gmail.com.