Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art Galleries present The Cartographer’s Podiatrist’s Underestimation of a Melancholic Toe (Contemporaneous Mappings of the Spirit, Body and Mind), an exhibition of works on paper by current Lamar Dodd chair Nina Bovasso. The exhibition opens on Friday, Jan. 26, with a reception from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Lamar Dodd School of Art Main Gallery. At 7 p.m., Bovasso will give a gallery talk about her process and work. The exhibition will remain on view through Mar. 9.
With this body of work, Nina Bovasso seeks a harmony rendered through a chaos of “everything happening at once.” Employing a strategy of accumulation of the most basic marks: a dot, a line, proliferation of color, size, shape and surface texture, Bovasso creates works where design and pattern have gone amok, defying order. The simple form of a doodle is elevated to the heroic; playfulness and whimsicality take on a seriousness and rhythm.
She references Urpflanze, Goethe’s concept of the archetypal plant, viewing plant life as an expression of dynamic process of continual change. Her interest is in the representation of nature in decorative arts and decorative arts as representative of cultures. This exhibition will feature 4 large scale paintings on paper, all in diptych format, and created within the last 2 years.
Bovasso recently had an exhibition of new paintings at Inman Gallery in Houston, Texas and will have an upcoming solo project at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. All works in this exhibition are courtesy of Bravin Lee Programs in New York City where Bovasso’s work is currently on view in her solo exhibition, Botanizing on the Asphalt, through Feb. 10.
Nina Bovasso, a native of New York, received a M.F.A. from Bard College where she received the Elaine de Kooning Memorial Fellowship; her B.F.A. is from the San Francisco Art Institute. In 1994, she attended Skohegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has had recent international solo shows in Brussels, Amsterdam and Dusseldorf as well as in the U.S. at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland, Ohio and at the Albany University Museum, Albany, New York. Bovasso was the recipient of a Pollack-Krasner Grant in 2004, a Louis Tiffany Grant in 2001 and a John Simon Guggenheim grant in 2000 among other prestigious awards. One of Bovasso’s large scale diptychs, With You in Mind, is in the permanent collection of Agnes Scott College (Decatur, Georgia) on view in the Student Center. A recent visiting artist at Illinois State University, California College of the Arts and Crafts and at the University of Virginia, Bovasso’s teaching and lecturing experience is as extensive as her exhibition record.
The Lamar Dodd Professorial Chair position was created in 1970 to recognize the outstanding service and leadership of Lamar Dodd who established the School of Art. Dodd Chairs have included Lamar Dodd, Elaine deKooning, Robert Beauchamp, Olivier Strebelle, Sydney Goodman, Alan Cober, Charles Hinman, Mel Chin, Susan Hauptman, Robert Stackhouse, Michael Lucero, Willie Cole and Luis Cruz Azaceta.
All Lamar Dodd School of Art Main Gallery events are free and open to the public. The Main Gallery is located in the Visual Arts Building on Jackson Street in Athens, Georgia. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. For further information, please contact Nora Wendl, Gallery Director, Lamar Dodd School of Art at 706/542.0069 or nwendl@uga.edu, or visit www.art.uga.edu.