EMERGING VISIONS: Gabriel Shaffer and Mark May
September 10 - October 24, 2010
An exhibition featuring self-taught artists Gabriel Shaffer (Asheville, NC) and Mark May (Mechanicsburg, PA), “Emerging Visions” seeks to examine and explore the artistic projects of these dynamic young visionaries.
OPENING RECEPTION Friday, September 10, 6-8 PM
Self-Taught Artist Mark May (b. 1979) has been showing at the Outsider Folk Art Gallery since it opened in 2005. From a young age Mark has had an appreciation for the history and communicative power of objects, forming collections from flea-markets, yard sales, and junk yards. Soon, he began assembling his found objects and materials to form sculptures, creatures and robots. The creative process was meditative and fun, but also more deeply meaningful, and alchemical, to Mark. A special-education teacher, May realized the potential for his creations to communicate with his students, and began leading robot workshops with children.
Gabriel Shaffer (b. 1975) exhibited for the first time with the Outsider Folk Art Gallery in the 2007 group exhibition titled “It’s in the Genes”, along with his mother, nationally renowned folk painter Cher Shaffer. Gabriel’s mixed media works employ layers of paint, graffiti, and collage to depict fictional or mythic characters, and evoke colorful intersections of sound, imagery, and poetry. The printed matter Shaffer collages into his work is gathered from a variety of sources including dumpsters, abandoned hospitals, factories, or houses, music books and more. Shaffer began exhibiting his earliest works in January 2004, and has been received with notable acclaim nationally and internationally.
Each of these self-taught artists has grown up in and around artistic traditions that are central to the focus of the Outsider Folk Art Gallery, and yet each has evolved in his own direction. Gabriel Shaffer had contact with many folk and outsider artists as a young boy, and cites artists such as Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Thornton Dial and Purvis Young as inspirations to him. But Shaffer draws from many other areas of influence as well. A poet and musician before finding his focus in visual art, Shaffer is a contemporary artist informed by knowledge and experiences in cultural worlds extending beyond the rural life often associated with folk art. His work is often included in pop-surrealism, low-brow, and street-art genres. Yet, Folk, and so-called Outsider Art, remain close to his heart and a central part of his identity.
Mark May grew up in a home filled with antiques, Americana, and interesting objects, since his mother, Jennifer May, is also a collector and an artist. To Mark, objects can have a presence to them, which he has an ability to feel. He sometimes puts objects together in a light-hearted, witty way, as with his clever and endearing robots, which take on vivid personalities through the sum of their parts. At times, while maintaining this buoyant quality, the work pulls from a deeper place. Mark senses a meaningful connection between the different components that he assembles into a sculpture, and this sense of destiny between them interlaces with his own life, as he may come across objects at different times, in different places, whether he is looking for them or not. When May collects an object he is drawn to, he may not know in what way he will use it until it reveals itself to him, often through sensing a synergy with other objects. Mark is a member of the Philadelphia Dumpster Divers, the found-object artist group, and was part of the 2009 show “Ecologically Correct: The Philadelphia Dumpster Divers” at the Outsider Folk Art Gallery.
“Emerging Visions” marks the first major showing of each artist at the Outsider Folk Art Gallery, and will display recent works created for the exhibition.
The Outsider Folk Art Gallery, located on the 5th Floor of the GoggleWorks Center for the Arts, is owned by Reading, PA natives George and Sue Viener, long time collectors of folk, outsider, and self-taught art. |