Press Release
The City of North Charleston's Cultural Arts Department is pleased to announce that concurrent solo exhibitions of monoprints by Mary Walker (Johns Island, SC) and oil works by Katy Mixon (Charleston, SC) will be on display at Park Circle Gallery from August 3-27, 2022. A free reception hosted by the artists will be held at the gallery on Friday, August 5, from 5:00-7:00pm. The public is invited to attend.
Dance Prints – Monoprints by Mary Walker
In her exhibition, Mary Walker presents several series of dance monoprints. Walker has been interested and involved in dance since childhood – taking classes, designing costumes, making posters, and sketching during rehearsals. The prints featured in her exhibition came from the artist's desire to express the musicality, movement, and emotion of a dance piece. “I was inspired by the emotion and drama expressed through the movement in choreography by Jose Limon, Mats Ek, Akram Khan, Pina Bausch, and Kristin Alexander,” Walker explains. After watching the rehearsals and videos of these choreographers, she would sketch. Then, using her sketches as a guide, she cut stencils or carved woodcuts to make monotypes. There are at least four to five prints in each series to help give the effect of movement and time.
Mary Walker is a painter and printmaker who started her working career as a high school math teacher after graduating from Queens College in North Carolina. While teaching in New York, she began studying with Isaac Soyer at the Art Students League. At that time, she decided to devote her life to painting. Walker is a winner of numerous regional grants and residencies and has curated several exhibitions. She has worked independently in national and international print studios and exhibited her art in group shows and solo exhibitions in the US and abroad. The Julie Heller Gallery in Provincetown, MA, and the Corrigan Gallery in Charleston, SC, currently represent her work, which she creates from her home studio in Johns Island, SC. Learn more about the artist at www.marywalkerart.com.
Open Endings – Oil works by Katy Mixon
In Open Endings, Katy Mixon presents a collection of works in oil that serve as inquiries into the surface of things – namely color and texture – for their power to emote and conceal. Mixon adds numerous layers of oil paint to panels, then carves back into the paint to reveal built-up surface complexity. The harvested chips of paint are used to start new works, seeds to germinate new paintings. Leftover supports become raw material for new constructions, and used hand rags are sewn into patterns modeled after scrap fabric quilting. “As the graft from one painting morphs into the next, my studio is a body in the act of becoming, both decaying and procreating,” she explains. Like a process of tillage, Mixon's paintings grow to reveal crops of color, pattern, and form.
Katy Mixon, born in Orangeburg, SC, is a visual artist working in painting, sculpture, quilting and photography. She earned an MFA from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a BA from Davidson College. She is an alumna of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Mixon is a recipient of a 2017 Working Artist Grant and a 2015 Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation Award. She was a finalist for a 2016 William and Dorothy Yeck Award and 2015 VCUarts Fountainhead Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited in galleries, museums, art centers, and academic institutions throughout the East Coast as well as Venice, Italy. She was also been an artist-in-residence to VCCA, VA; Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, NE; The Hambidge Center, GA; AICAD Studio Practice Residency, NY; and Byrdcliffe Art Colony, NY. Mixon returned to the Lowcountry in 2019, relocating from Brooklyn, NY, to Charleston where she now lives and works. Learn more about the artist at www.mixonstudio.com.
The Park Circle Gallery is located at 4820 Jenkins Avenue in North Charleston. Admission is free and free street parking is available on Jenkins Avenue in front of the gallery, as well as on the adjacent streets and in parking lots close by. The gallery is open 11:00am-6:00pm Wednesday-Friday, and Noon-4:00pm on Saturday. For more information about PCG, call 843-637-3565 or email culturalarts@northcharleston.org. For information on other Cultural Arts programs and artist opportunities, visit the Arts & Culture section of the City's website at www.northcharleston.org.
