Download CV
Blurring the boundaries between the past and the present, these new “heirlooms” enmesh memory, place, trauma, personal and family history. Paint squeezed through woven netting is a metaphor for the way memory and experiences fuse together. Embedded references and codes include camouflage designs, decorative patterns, Morse code, personal symbolism and memories. Paint is extruded through thin mesh fabric merging with designs used in traditional embroidery from western Ukraine/southeast Poland where my great grandparents were born. International signal code patterns and Morse code weave hidden messages into the painting’s material and imagery. More broadly, this work investigates painting’s basic form by reconfiguring aspects of its materiality (stretcher frame + canvas + paint). Extruding paint through woven materials (tightly woven organza mesh, loosely woven burlap and plastic), merges image and substrate into a new fused material layer. Perforating the canvas creates ad hoc camouflage netting. This materiality echoes the entwined experiences that shape us.
A nationally exhibited artist originally hailing from Colorado, Laurel McMechan has been an artist in residence at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Colony and Vermont Studio Center. Her work was most recently on exhibit at Spark Gallery in Denver, Colorado, and also resides in private and public collections, including the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Rhode Island School of Design and University of Richmond Museums. She has taught at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and University of Massachusetts Lowell, and currently teaches at the University of Denver.
Blurring the boundaries between the past and the present, these new “heirlooms” enmesh memory, place, trauma, personal and family history. Paint squeezed through woven netting is a metaphor for the way memory and experiences fuse together. Embedded references and codes include camouflage designs, decorative patterns, Morse code, personal symbolism and memories. Paint is extruded through thin mesh fabric merging with designs used in traditional embroidery from western Ukraine/southeast Poland where my great grandparents were born. International signal code patterns and Morse code weave hidden messages into the painting’s material and imagery. More broadly, this work investigates painting’s basic form by reconfiguring aspects of its materiality (stretcher frame + canvas + paint). Extruding paint through woven materials (tightly woven organza mesh, loosely woven burlap and plastic), merges image and substrate into a new fused material layer. Perforating the canvas creates ad hoc camouflage netting. This materiality echoes the entwined experiences that shape us.
A nationally exhibited artist originally hailing from Colorado, Laurel McMechan has been an artist in residence at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Colony and Vermont Studio Center. Her work was most recently on exhibit at Spark Gallery in Denver, Colorado, and also resides in private and public collections, including the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Rhode Island School of Design and University of Richmond Museums. She has taught at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and University of Massachusetts Lowell, and currently teaches at the University of Denver.