Distance and Desire

Ray Drew Gallery, NMHU, March 7 – April 26 2024

Terry Maker; Distance and Desire  a solo exhibition. Apart of the Ray Drew Gallery; VISITING ARTISTS SERIES ( #3)

Terry Maker’s sculptural mixed media to be exhibited March 7 – April 26 highlights some of the artist’s most significant aesthetic and conceptual work to date. Like most mixed-media artists, Maker is constantly exploring new materials and processes.

In this body of work each piece is the result of seemingly unpredictable trial-and-error. By layering and arranging found objects and industrial detritus , Maker aggregates numerous materials and means to create complex visual alluvial terrains. In their fabrication, Maker’s 2d works are more like sculptures. The surfaces are so highly worked that they became topographical in nature. The works are large and deeply layered, and in some regards almost episodic. Maker’s work has size and significance, but it also has a range of humility in the materials and its outward fragility.

This is indeed the work of a woman artist in its complexity and depth. In our current world we no longer have to be surprised by art of magnitude and girth being produced by women. We welcome acclaimed artist Terry Maker & her work to be on view to celebrate International Women’s Day & National Women’s History month.

– Head Curator; Ray Drew & Kennedy Galleries and University Art Collections ; Gina Hartmann

Each piece in my various bodies of work emerges from humble origins, taking shape from an eccentric collection of ordinary materials that initially offer no hint of what they might become when made to live together. The final dense, tactile assemblages and free-standing sculptures present themselves with minimal clues to their complex origins. The building materials are highly considered, formally and conceptually. Yet as they come into being, my position in relation to these materials is the sometimes uncomfortable one of sustained suspense. Discovering their ultimate destiny requires curiosity-driven play—which, with such materials, is a visceral, physically demanding, and mysterious process.

I explore the process of art making while addressing themes relating to human desire and decay, death and resurrection, and mundane and sacred and mark-making–both literal and figurative. In all my work, I intend to pull viewers into these universal tensions, to stimulate novel, transcendent responses to the existential questions behind humanity’s search for meaning. The revealed surfaces present the viewer with a visual puzzle, made even stranger by its unique visual vocabulary, that opens the possibility of new connections, new perspectives. One circle, one cut, one compressed or expanded square inch at a time, I invite viewers to engage and explore our mysterious universe, expanding ever since it was just a little dot of a thing.  – Terry Maker