Megan Bostic, Andy Mauery + Rosemary Meza-DesPlas
Hairstory
January 3 – February 29
First Fridays, 6 – 10pm
January 3 + February 7
Sponsored by TowneBank
Megan Bostic, The First Months of Grief, detail
As a curator, I’ve found myself challenged by works of art that utilize hair as a medium. It is a material that creates in me both a feeling of physical disgust and a deep sense of intimacy with the object. This complex and visceral response is the driving force behind Hairstory. Artists Megan Bostic, Andy Mauery, and Rosemary Meza-DesPlas use hair to explore themes of grief, mortality, craft, environment, femininity and power.
Megan Bostic’s piece The First Months of Grief uses hair to document and process the loss of her mother. In the months following her mother’s death, the artist collected hair from her showers and encased it in resin. The resulting installation functions as both relics of Bostic’s loss and an empirical document of her own bodily existence.
Andy Mauery’s sculptural installations utilize hair to explore similar ideas as they relate to the natural environment. Hair functions as a momento mori or reminder of our inevitable death, symbolically linking humans to animals and plants. Hair is manipulated to evoke environments, flora and fauna.
Rosemary Meza-DesPlas’ choice of hair as drawing-medium humanizes her naturalistic portraits, breaking the sometimes voyeuristic relationship that can exist between viewer and subject. Meza-DesPlas also chooses hair as an allegory of women’s experience. Hair’s ability to be a sign of beauty and sexuality while also eliciting disgust is akin to the way in which women are treated within our society.
As evidenced in all the works on view, the bodily nature of hair creates an inherent link between the viewer and the works on display. This elemental human connection to the art creates a point of access that is not often experienced in a gallery setting.
Annah Lee, Director of Artistic Programs
Rosemary Meza-DesPlas, Agency 1
Megan Bostic holds a Masters of Art + Design from North Carolina State University and Bachelor of Fine Arts in both Studio Art and Art Education from East Carolina University. Megan has worked in the visual arts, arts education, community outreach, and nonprofit worlds for the last ten years. She currently serves as the Programs Manager with Arts Access, Inc, working to make the arts accessible to people with disabilities. Her most recent exhibitions include Constant / Change at GreenHill Center for North Carolina Art, Processing at Artspace NC, and Catching Ourselves at the Cary Art Center. Bostic was a Regional Emerging Artist-In-Residence at Artspace from January-July 2017.
Andy Mauery received her BFA from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and her MFA from West Virginia University. Collaborative and solo installations have been exhibited in venues including the Chaves de la Rosa Cultural Complex (Peru), MOBIUS in Boston, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, UP Gallery (Pittsburgh), and SPACES Gallery in Cleveland. Mauery has been at artist in residence at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Vermont Studio Center, and Tesuque Glassworks (New Mexico). Currently she is an Associate Professor of Art, and the Foundations Coordinator, at The University of Maine.
Rosemary Meza-DesPlas currently lives in Farmington, New Mexico. She earned an MFA from Maryland Institute, College of Art (Hoffberger School of Painting) and a BFA from the University of North Texas. Her artwork has been exhibited at numerous galleries and museums throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. Her work has been written about in several publications including the Huffington Post, Dallas Morning News, The Durango Herald, Wall Street International, and Interview Magazine. Meza-DesPlas parallels the themes in her visual artwork with the written word and spoken word performances.
