Newman University will spotlight a new artist exhibit in the Steckline Gallery during December.
Artist Micala Gingrich-Gaylord’s exhibit, “The Mourning of New Maps,” will be featured for First Friday from 5 to 8 p.m. Dec. 3 in the Steckline Gallery. There will also be an opportunity to hear from her in an artist talk noon to 1 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 2.
About the artist’s work
Gingrich-Gaylord’s exhibit explores a topographical and artistic rendering of where humanity is and the circumstances it finds itself in.
“Over the trajectory of my life,” Gingrich-Gaylord said, “the maps have continuously been changing. My friends and I called ourselves the mapmakers — as if we had some superpower to predict the next stop or the toils and hardships we would meet along the way. 2020 demonstrated this to be unequivocally false in the way we had always imagined. It gave way to new maps, closer looks and small intimate ideas.”
Her unique perspective on life and its many situations has led to a multitude of poignant artistic discoveries.
“This body of work is a new conclusion or a working theory about excavation and relocation of a map,” she said. “It’s the new places and landscapes we have all found ourselves in, and the intersections of beauty’s quiet and peace that this new time has potential to create; the past we are able to view again with a new perspective. Some of the very first marks made were a notation of place, a marker of remembering something.”
Through her creative use of textiles and paper, Gingrich-Gaylord captures some of the more metaphysical properties of space and the circumstances of humanity.
“In my work, the collection of materials is an important engine of meaning and allows stories to evolve in process. COVID forced us to be separate and consider endpoints and places of overlap. Fabric and woven material do a similar job. Many of the works in this show are about where we found ourselves, a ‘where’ that was not a place but circumstance. There is an inherent landscape revealed when we step away.”
About the gallery
“The Mourning of New Maps” will remain on display in the Steckline Gallery in Demattias Hall from Dec. 2 to Jan. 27. The gallery is open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday or by appointment. For more information, please contact Shannon Johnson, assistant art professor and director of the Steckline Gallery, at [email protected].
