Contemporary Street Artists X-O and Amanda Marie Make their Mark on Eugene
“The Many Places We Are” opens at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art on May 9 with a talk and reception at 2 p.m.
EUGENE, Ore. -- (May 4, 2015) – Street artists X-O and Amanda Marie are making their mark on Eugene with a site-specific installation, “The Many The Places We Are,” at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and a mural project with The Three Muses and The Gallery at the Watershed on the WaterShed Building at Third and Mill.
The JSMA exhibition is on view from May 9 to August 9, 2015, and opens with a talk and reception on Saturday, May 9, at 2 p.m.
The artists will work on the mural project at various times in the week ahead. Amanda Marie’s signature visual language, built from an ever-expanding toolbox that includes hand-drawn, hand-cut stencils, is her mode of expressing the complexity of sharing emotional travels. For X-O, his stylistic habit of collecting “lost object” materials along his travels is the basis for his often large-scale interpretations of memory and emotion, which he visits through shape, color, and texture.
“I like to dig through an old pile to create another pile of my own,” says X-O. “For me, it’s the challenge of making something useful from something seemingly useless. I also like the surprise of not knowing what materials I’ll have when I start, or what I’ll have when I’m finished.”
“The Many Places We Are” is a two-artist exhibition that explores the concept of emotional travel and the bonds that are developed as you move through a physical space. Amanda Marie and X-O, artists who have traveled extensively together, explore the concept by combining their signature art styles.
Amanda Marie is a painter and stencilist who, when she isn’t traveling, lives in Colorado. She attended the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design and has exhibited extensively in the U.S. and Europe. In addition to her works on paper she also paints large-scale murals in outdoor, urban, and garden settings.
Her use of nostalgic storybook-like imagery invites viewers into her allegorical and painterly compositions. Her paintings use a combination of media and techniques, including screen-printing, spray painting, assemblage, and acrylic applied by brush and platter techniques. In addition to her recognition in the fine art world, Amanda Marie is a well-known street artist and is among the top women working in the important genre of Stencilism.
X-O, aka Hyland Mather, is a found-object--or as he likes to say, “lost objects” -- assemblage artist. He attended Colorado State University and received a B.A. in Philosophy with a focus on Aesthetics. He has exhibited recently in New York (Masters Projects), Los Angeles (Center for Audio Visual Expression), and Amsterdam (Kallenbach Gallery). Like Amanda Marie, X-O works in both fine arts venues and as an active street artist. X-O approaches every location where he builds his “lost object” installations in what he says is “a very ‘Zen-like” form of hunting, collecting, and arranging objects that have been discarded or abandoned.
As Mather, he is founder and director of Andenken Gallery in Amsterdam. From 1997 to the present, Andenken Gallery has played host to some of the most culture-shaping artists of our age and heralded the importance of Street Art in contemporary culture long before its impact was appreciated in the fine arts world.
About the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art
The University of Oregon's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art is a premier Pacific Northwest museum for exhibitions and collections of historic and contemporary art based in a major university setting. The mission of the museum is to enhance the University of Oregon’s academic mission and to further the appreciation and enjoyment of the visual arts for the general public. The JSMA features significant collections galleries devoted to art from China, Japan, Korea, the Americas and Europe as well as changing special exhibition galleries. The JSMA is one of six museums in Oregon accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.
The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art is located on the University of Oregon campus at 1430 Johnson Lane. Museum hours are 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesdays, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays through Sundays. Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for senior citizens. Free admission is given to ages 18 and under, JSMA members, college students with ID, and University of Oregon faculty, staff and students. For information, contact the JSMA, 541-346-3027.
About the University of Oregon
The University of Oregon is among the 108 institutions chosen from 4,633 U.S. universities for top-tier designation of "Very High Research Activity" in the 2010 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The UO also is one of two Pacific Northwest members of the Association of American Universities.
Contact:
JSMA: Debbie Williamson Smith, 541-346-0942, debbiews@uoregon.edu
Links: Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, http://jsma.uoregon.edu