Connecting Everything Through Color
A mid-career survey of the art of Alicia Philley
May 27-July 22 | Opening event May 31, 7-9 pm | Artist Talk June 22, 7pm
I believe that color is a pure and mystical energy. I’ve known this intuitively for most of my life. I could feel it the first time my mom read the Color Kittens Golden Book to me. The part where those silly cats in overalls mix up all the paints to make every color in the world still gets me a little choked up. When words fail, I rely on color to communicate.
Color has allowed me to share stories…
An integral part of understanding self and connecting with others. It has given me a healthy way to express joy, fear, confusion, awe, anger, and gratitude. As the through-line in my art practice, it is has become a tool for organizing and discovering new insights.
I've been thinking a lot about connection these past few years
—with people, cities, nature, the past. I want to understand how these varied points of interaction show up in our definitions of self, our mental health, our ability to survive.
My installation, which spills out onto the Dougherty Arts Center’s front lawn,
is a multi-media, multi-decade-spanning visual story about what can happen when we slow down and try to make sense of the environments we live in. This art extravaganza is also a rather personal cacophony of color, documenting twenty-five years of my life. Like a good album, it will take visitors on a journey that is open to individual interpretation and will provide new insights with every “listen.”
A survey, by definition, is a comprehensive look at as much data—or in this case artwork—as possible.
This exhibition spans 25 years and features every art medium in my repertoire— painted canvas, masking-taped linework, globby expressionist acrylics, painted and dyed fabric, screen printing, crocheted and knitted yarn, square/rectangle wood panels, custom-shaped wood panels, wood staining, digital mixed media, mold-made resin sculpture, ceramics, beeswax-embedded assemblage, paper collage, minimalist, maximalist, and every “ist” in between.
Our brains are wired to find patterns, to create associations.
There’s a lot of scientific research proving the health benefits of slowing down to take in the world around us with our “discovery eyes.” As I look back, I can see that my art-making is a chronicle of what I see when I am looking in this way. In the changing styles and mediums you’ll find the crowded streets of New York, with its towering buildings and concrete laden pocket parks, and the ever-changing city of Austin, with its cycles of flowing to dry creeks and blooming to frozen neighborhood gardens. I have documented the world around me—the minutia that is the background and sometimes the foreground of life.
These artworks are the expression of slowing down to enjoy the simple act of looking with curiosity. This exhibition is a space for viewers to do the same.
—Exhibition postcard design by Leslie Kell. Photo by Meena Matai
