By Richard Schultz
The place to view and to celebrate all that is creative is in La Cieneguita this Saturday, February 25, from 1pm to 5pm. The Chapel of Jimmy Ray Gallery presents a new exhibition, “Abundance,” for your discerning pleasure. The exhibit features local artist Beverly Moor, an individual of active spirit and keen unfiltered imagination.
Beverly Bunting Moor was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1945, and raised in Houston, Texas. She studied painting at the University of Texas at Austin, the Rhode Island School of Design, and Brown University. Working mainly with fiber and textiles, Moor developed a unique abstract visual language composed of fractal, shredded, curling, and overlapping planes and lines, extending in three dimensions and beyond the frame. Her work has been widely displayed in both public and private collections and galleries, including The Centennial Museum of London. She has shown at numerous corporate exhibitions including IBM, Westinghouse, Bell and Howell, and the John Hancock Building. Her work has been featured in The Chicago Art Review, American Art Galleries, and Fiber Art Now magazine.
Moor’s most recent work is a return to her artistic roots. Her method consists of painting on heavy-weight paper and manipulating it to create multi-dimensional, many-layered surfaces. Many of these papers are left in the elements (sun, rain, wind, dust) to fade and then be manipulated. Hand-torn edges blend with hand-drawn lines and marks, and paper is stacked both horizontally and vertically, creating palimpsests, juxtapositions, and codex-like arrangements of contrasting textures. The result is rough, organic, almost geologic, evoking the raw beauty of ruins and natural formations.
As Moor writes, «My children often accuse me of having ‘abundance issues.’ As a textile artist, I am a pack rat by nature; I collect scraps of this and that constantly, and I hate to see something go to waste. (More than once, I have made a taxi pull to the side of the road so I could pick up a particularly intriguing piece of roadside trash.) Around Christmas, I began thinking about abundance issues that we all have—the people who have too much and the people who have too little. Christmas is meant to be a time of joy and fellow-feeling, and yet the expectation that we should all be happy can make those of us without abundance (of wealth, family, or health) feel even worse. To embody that tension, most of the materials that make up this show are taken from items discarded in the wake of the holiday season: styrofoam packing, cardboard, plastic, and so much more—an abundance of worthless items, which I have hopefully reinvested with some worth.»
The show will also include the works of our cadre of exciting permanent artists: Meryl Truett, Ann Chamberlin, and Carlos Ramirez.
The Chapel of Jimmy Ray Gallery continues to offer expressive art openings in a celebratory community spirit. You are invited for a festive afternoon in the campo. A fine time is guaranteed in an atmosphere of revelation, joy, and inquiry… Be prepared for the unexpected.
Art exhibition
“Abundance”: A New Show
Sat., Feb. 25, 1-5pm
The Chapel of Jimmy Ray Gallery
La Cieneguita
For directions: www.chapelofjimmyraygallery.com.
