ARTISTS STATEMENT
I work with paper and pencil, It is tactile, and immediate, impermanent, and humble. Using drawing, bookmaking, paper manipulation, and poetry, I have been exploring the world through a filter of art, testing my ability to see. How one thing relates to another in the visual plane or in the fantasy that is a representational drawing. How a word repeated becomes a prayer. The shattering of expectations that is abstraction. The beautiful object and the useful object, and whether we can, or should, distinguish one from the other. My current work reconciles these paths—my ability as a draftsman, my exploration of the world through abstraction, my love of the beautiful object, and my writing. I am combining these threads of writing and making, with works on the theme of hidden women often drawn from Bible or myth rewritten from the distaff. The artist books and handmade journals beg participation, sometimes thwarted; they are still life performance art. Using stationary frames, I create an illusion of movement, triggered by a word, or a shape, or the tearing and rearranging of the paper itself, the lure to turn a page. The viewer cannot escape taking part, imposing their own interpretation, or decoding the message from their own inner dialogue. These themes converge: the stripped-down wisdom of the crone, the essentiality of the abstract, the hidden and the silenced.
The bride in flames
The children dead
Every vow worthless
The betrayal absolute
And only the innocent pay
Medea’s murdered children
blameless of the crime
For which they have died
Horrifying enough to see
The dehumaned corpses
Without worrying about
Who will clean up
ABOUT THE ARTIST
I have been involved in art making in Chicago since 1978, with numerous one-artist shows, works in corporate and private collections, and experience curating and staging exhibitions. I was the gallery manager at Contemporary Art Workshop, where I also served on the board until their closing in 2010, and I have shown at the Illinois State Fair, Illinois State Museum Invitational, College of DuPage, Bernal Gallery, A. R. C. Gallery, Artemisia Gallery, Contemporary Art Workshop, and elsewhere. More recent shows include Women’s Work juried exhibition at the Old Courthouse Arts Center in McHenry IL, Friendzone Gallery in Chicago, and The WasteShed Glass Case Gallery coming in December 2024.
© Alexandra Samios