Atmospheric Disturbances
Paintings by Nancy McCallum
Allenton Gallery

I see my work as a meditation on displacement, both psychological and geographic. As my life is one marked by frequent travel and changes of address, my perceptions focus on a world in flux, one in which threat is real and reality is fleeting. This sense of the mutable is also influenced by my current environment, a barrier island off the hurricane haunted Carolina coast.

This transient sense is echoed in my process which combines narrative with abstract forms in a series of layers. I often sand through the resulting strata seeking past signs and marks that create their own sense of place and atmosphere. The paintings become contingent records of travel to an imagined world, a place of uncertainty yet protean possibility.

I am interested in the contemplative, flawed and contingent aspects of myself and my location. In my work these concepts become embedded within work in which the fugitive and threatened become memorialized. – Nancy McCallum, Artist Statement

Force Field
Paintings by Mark Brown
Semans Gallery

‘…Feel that I was there
before.
I felt this
as a child, and now
I know it.’
-Franz Wright, June Storm

‘…JK: And your feelings about the top-to-bottom verticals in this series? MB: With the Winterreise series, I’m more aware that the stripes are analogous to trees... I remembered once walking in the woods disoriented and alone at night as a boy. I saw the stark beauty of the trees silhouetted against the moonlight, and the shadows the trees cast on the snow. It may have been my first awareness of the sublime.’ -From an interview with Julie Karabenick, geoform.net, February, 2006

At age 31 Franz Schubert was revising the score for Die Winterreise on his deathbed. I understood the mood of the music on my first hearing-- it transported me to a way of experiencing a dimension of existence that is best or possibly only comprehended in art.

For over six years I lived and painted alone in a rustic cabin in the woods near Efland, NC. My current studio in Chapel Hill is also located in woods, and tall trees are visible through clerestory windows above my painting wall. The strong verticals suggested by trees have been a dominant feature of my work and continue to function as armatures for the compositional elements in my paintings.

Like the Romantics, I find more of what I’m looking for in art in the irrational, the intuitive. To quote the late artist Peter Pinchbeck, “Painting must go its own way. It must always elude our understanding.” – Mark Brown

Weather Patterns
Paintings by Mario Marzan
Semans Gallery

Influenced by the constantly shifting landscape and architecture of my childhood, I create drawings and sculptures depicting an alternative reality, invented and inspired by the cycles of deconstruction and reconstruction produced by hurricanes. Based on both my memories of Puerto Rico and the recent rise in storms across the Caribbean and Southern US, my work responds to these changing landscapes, suggesting the storms’ power to alter not just the physical terrain, but also individual psyches and the broader cultures of affected areas.

In referencing the hurricane’s continual transformation of landscapes and mentalities, I hope to provoke certain questions: How do we “map” memories? How is a visual crisis represented? How are boundaries determined? Drawing, while perceived as a logical system, also allows for the creation of deconstructed spaces that can be unraveled and redefined through the processes of mark-making and repetition. The evidence of one’s hand and the ability to be very direct with formal choices infuses the drawings with a sense of intimacy. My proximity to the work and its scale is also focal. The larger drawings give me more room to play with scale within the image, while the smaller ones tend to be more quiet and delicate. Sequences are created, fabricating an imaginary world where my memories of places are topographically stored and distorted to their limits of collapse.

In collecting representations, stories, myths and fantasies, a mental terrain is diagramed, allowing narrative and fictional landscapes to respond to one another. Struggling between order and disorder, these elements ultimately piece together landscapes and structures that, like our multi-layered, fast-paced, precarious lives, demand a place in the visible world.
-Mario Marzan, Artist Statement

DAC INFO:
The DAC is located at 120 Morris St. in downtown Durham and the galleries are open Monday – Saturday 9 am – 9 pm, and Sunday 1 – 6 pm. For parking and directions the public may call (919) 560-2787.

Artwork in the galleries is available for purchase unless otherwise indicated. If you are interested in purchasing artwork please contact Dara Silver at 919-560-2719. Purchases support the artist and Durham Arts Council.

Exhibits at the DAC are made possible through gifts to the Durham Arts Council Annual Arts Fund.

The Central Carolina Bank (CCB) Gallery is located on the first floor. For more information about exhibits, programming, and artist opportunities contact The Durham Art Guild.