Marley Dawson AUSTRALIA

Marley Dawson works in sculpture, installation and performance. He is as much interested in the aesthetic concerns of late-modernist sculpture and the experimentation implicit in the kinetic art movement as the heroic antics of popculture icons such as Indiana Jones, Buster Keaton and MacGuyver. Dawson constructs scenarios about construction. His work bears the traces of activity both in the movement of his complex aesthetic machines or in the residue of intervention present in his constructed situations. He investigates the activity of making art while at the same time reinforcing its aesthetic purpose.

Dawson’s work is underpinned by an innate humour, its apparent insolence kept in check by the artist’s devotion to labour and his hands-on, D.I.Y. technical involvement. With an emphasis on action and response, there is an anticipation implicit in the feeling that something may happen or be revealed. In prolonging that anticipation, the work reveals the complex aesthetic experience of what is happening.

Santiago Rios SPAIN

This exhibition aims to show Santiago Rios’ drawings and paintings in relation to music. Rios creates his work while attending concerts; using ink and watercolors he works directly on sheets of music or programs from the concert.

The works in this exhibition are grouped by music: classical, jazz, and flamenco. Because the works are made in situ during the concert, Rios is confined to create intimate works on portable medium. In some cases Rios digitally modifies his drawings and prints them on paper or canvas then incorporates color into the work using watercolor or oil.

For the past decade Rios has been working off of the inspiration he draws from musicians. The more engaging the musician the better able he is to interpret the feeling from the music. This exhibition aims to provide a visual reference to the beauty of the music.

J.J. McCracken MT. RAINIER, MD

Eating clay casts of vegetables in large quantities; hauling water in vessels that spill; wearing a steel gag and using the body to thaw text frozen in a sheet of ice ... These are some of the challenges J.J. McCracken's performers face as they activate the installations she designs and builds. Characters are desperate for nutrition, but consumption is empty (non-nutritious) or altogether foiled. Workers build, and their product decays in front of them. Any sense of achievement is only momentary.

"I don't set out to make work about suffering. I don't love asking my audience to watch me suffer. But I am so angry at my own impotence—I feel too small to make a difference. From inside my own perspective, my labor is huge and taxing. But it makes little dent in the wider world, and I have yet to find another way to apprehend these terrible observations of things around me... I am looking for triumph (and beauty) in the grimy, snotty reality of perseverance."

J.J. McCracken received a B.A. in Anthropology from The College of William and Mary in 1995, an M.F.A. in Studio Art from The George Washington University in 2005, and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2012. McCracken is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, recently including a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award, and a grant from the Puffin Foundation. McCracken teaches at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C. and has exhibited at venues across the United States. She is currently building large scale projects with the generous support of a position as Artist-In-Residence at Margaret Boozer's Red Dirt Studio in Mt. Rainier, MD.

Visit her website at www.jjmccracken.com