ANITA COOKE

JONATHAN FERRARA GALLERY is proud to announce Strata, an exhibition of new mixed-media paintings  by artist ANITA COOKE.  The exhibition will be on view in the main gallery from 20 February to 26 March with a first Saturday artist reception on 5 March from 6-9pm. As a continuation of her body of work entitled Dimensional Patterning, Cooke’s third solo exhibition at the gallery features the newest suite of her characteristic and labor-intensive, mixed-media, sewn canvas paintings, as well as, a new series of works with paper.

Cooke says of the exhibition . . .     
I use the term “Dimensional Patterning” to describe the building up of the surfaces in my work through the making, compiling, composing, and assembling of similar elements that are repeated in a quasi-ordered, patterned way. Large acrylic-painted canvases are cut into strips that are then pierced, cut, frayed, folded, torn, sewn and glued together into an array of loosely structured order. In my current body of work, the strips are positioned with edges facing front. These edges often have machine-created knots sewn directly on them numbering in the hundreds.  These separate parts are amassed in multiples, which are then assembled, arranged and adhered to a backing.

Patterns consist of repeated elements: lines, shapes, colors and textures. These elements can be “patterned” and repeated endlessly with no one element being in the visual forefront with a discernible focal point, beginning, or end point. Because they can possess this quality of “the never-ending”, patterns, then, can function to suggest or remind us of the incalculable, measureless space that surrounds us and that we are not usually concerned with or aware of in the routines of our daily lives. In the sewn canvas pieces titled “Strata,” varied structured elements are stacked and layered many ‘stories’ high in laminated bands or tiers that are non-directional in nature. I am concerned with the notion of “core samples” (borrowing a term from scientific geologic exploration): which suggest that these works are perhaps just tiny slices, veins, cross-sections or samplings of some micro or macro whole and that also have an ambiguity of origin. I have always been interested in “what is on the inside”- and in what that interior core structure might look like or contain. The desire to look within, behind, and underneath and to question where a thing came from is paramount to human curiosity. Within the realm of this exposed core, there is hopefully revealed some essence or spirit and something of interest that invites meditation, contemplation and visual exploration.