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{The
Exhibit}
Between
A collaborative exhibition
between Nell Ruby and Robin Dana
January 30 - March 7, 2003
Opening Reception January 30, 7 p.m. - 9 p.m.
Artists' talk February 25, 7 p.m.
The Dalton Gallery
Dana Fine Arts Building
Agnes Scott College
141 East College Avenue
Decatur, GA 30030
404 471-5361
daltongallery@agnesscott.edu
Gallery
hours are Monday through Friday 10 a.m. - 4:30 p.m., Saturday
and Sunday 12 - 4 p.m.
Entry to the gallery is free and open to the public.
The gallery is located on the corner of S. McDonough and E. Dougherty
streets. Parking is available in the West Parking facility on
S. McDonough St., one block south of E. College Ave.
The Dalton Gallery at Agnes Scott College is thrilled to present
the collaborative exhibition Between, a dialogue between artists
Nell Ruby and Robin Dana. Through friendship these artists discovered
distinct similarities in what drives their art making processes.
They deal with ideas of home and the boundaries between personal
and public space. Both focus on signifiers of the everyday that
emerge from a culture borne from the comfort of Tupperware and
Suburbanization. Ruby and Dana are inspired by the nuances of
memory, especially the seemingly useless, once underrated experiences
that are now realized as places of pivotal discovery. The worth
of these events is marked by their resurfacing in dreams, and
triggered by such sensory notions as color and smell.
The work in the exhibit is instigated by conversations between
the artists. Partnering up with someone in such an endeavor as
art making can be an intimate experience, moving beyond the private
musings of the lone artist - the island, bringing up feelings
of exposure, safety, and bravery. For Ruby and Dana this commingling
of energies feels natural. They urge each other on - capturing
one another's train of thought and running with it.
The
attitudes of Ruby's and Dana's working processes are extremely
different. Dana says that "Nell (Ruby) does things that I
would never do, and I do things that she drives, amplifies. It
becomes part of what the work is about." Ruby jumps headlong
into the unknown while Dana carefully masticates over decisions.
Utilizing mass-produced domestic products such as soap, toothbrushes
and light switches, Ruby creates installations of living sculpture.
She layers and overlaps, tricks the eye and leads the viewer into
dense spaces of aggressively quirky perspectives. Dana photographs
and builds clean minimalist vistas of leftover impressions of
loss, providing an emptiness for her viewer to enter. Her art
vibrates with a curious glorification of the insignificant, those
things often immediately forgotten. These artists have merged
to magnify the sweetness of the mundane, to caress and study its
underside, clarifying and confirming the importance of supporting
the often dis-remembered.
Robin
Dana is the Gallery Director and teaches Photography at the Lamar
Dodd School of Art in the University of Georgia. She is a graduate
of Agnes Scott College, and received a Masters in Fine Art from
the University of Connecticut. Nell Ruby is a Visiting Professor
of Art at Agnes Scott College. She has exhibited her work nationally,
including at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, The Mitchell
Musuem in Illinois, Birmingham Southern University Gallery in
Alabama, the St. Louis Design Center in Missouri and the University
of Hawaii Gallery in Honolulu.
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