Scapes, Lee Somers

Scapes
Lee Somers
Opening Reception | Friday, January 16, 2015 | 6:00  – 8:00 p.m.
Exhibition on view through February 13, 2015

The Jane Hartsook Gallery is pleased to present the New York City Solo Exhibition debut of Alabama-based artist Lee Somers. Lee constructs multilayered assemblages – mosaics of miscellaneous resplendent ceramic shards that reference, among others, early Chinese landscape paintings. Lee’s ceramic paintings are narratives that “compress geologic time” collapsing the entirety of human civilization into a moment.

Lee is “fascinated by the intersection of our cultural and natural histories. Architecture and landscape locate the human perspective in this nexus. Cartography and the natural sciences abstract and expand, overlaying our perceptions with alternate models of time and space. In travel, time spent outdoors, observation of ruins, cities, landscapes, and moments of sublime experience I am compelled by the systems in which we exist.”

Finding “ceramics the perfect material metaphor for the entwinement of natural and cultural processes… a microcosm, compressing geologic time and the history of civilization into moments. Working with it is a process of reconciling intentions with serendipity… The resulting works weave a matrix of relations where juxtaposition is evident, components are both individual and integrated, and imagination is given multiple points of departure.” –Lee Somers

Lee Somers (b. 1977) works in ceramics and mixed media to explore a variety of interests in geology, landscape, material culture and architecture. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries and museums, most recently at the Fort Collins Lincoln Center (Colorado) and the Seattle Design Center (Washington). A teacher and artist recently awarded the Franzen Teaching Fellowship at Colorado State University and Art 342. Lee currently lives in Montevallo, Alabama where he is an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Montevallo.