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Maude Kerns Art Center Presents
Moments in Time:
Work by Cynthia Grilli, Thalia Lerin, Paul Machu, &
Lauren Odell Usher Sharpton
Exhibit Dates
January 15 - February 12, 2016
Opening Reception:
Friday, January 15, 6 - 8pm
The Maude Kerns Art Center presents the first exhibit of the new season, “Moments in Time: Work by Cynthia Grilli, Thalia Lerin, Paul Machu, and Lauren Odell Usher Sharpton,” opening with a public reception on Friday, January 15, from 6:00 – 8:00 pm. The exhibit showcases four artists whose work was selected by Maude Kerns Art Center’s 2015 – 2016 biennial exhibits jury, which included painters Lillian Almeida and Kathleen Caprario-Ulrich, art critic and landscape photographer Bob Keefer, mixed media artist Nancy Pobanz, and sculptor Jud Turner. “Moments in Time” features artwork that reflects upon time, human interconnection, and narrative. The exhibit is on display through February 12.
Cynthia Grilli, from Ventura, California, is a figurative painter who works in a loose, expressive style, focusing on figures caught in fleeting moments of time. She often sets her subjects in symbolic landscapes or interiors that suggest internal states of mind. Grilli received a BFA in Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in Painting with Honors from the Graduate School of Figurative Art, New York Academy of Art, in New York City. She has exhibited her work extensively in California, as well as in Nevada, New Mexico, New York, and Oregon.
Thalia Lerin, from Eugene, has long been fascinated with the world of miniatures, and has shown her miniature fortune cookie nichos at the Art Center’s Día de los Muertos Exhibit. For “Moments in Time,” she exhibits six shadow boxes using polymer clay and mixed media. Titled “The Redemption of Zelda,” the shadow boxes relate a story in the life of Zelda. After viewing Lerin’s work gallery goers can speak into a tape recorder and relate the story of Zelda based on their own interpretations of the shadow boxes. Lerin has observed that the interpretations of Zelda’s story often mirror an aspect in the viewer’s own life.
Paul Machu, of Eugene, a retired writer, producer, and director in video production, returns to his first love of still photography with a series of eight candid portrait photos accompanied by the life stories of his subjects. Machu studied photography at U.C.L.A and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. Machu says of his portraits: “While I believe that each are interesting as photographs in their own right, I hope that the intriguing stories of my subjects will also resonate with observers.”
Lauren Odell Usher Sharpton, from Corvallis, Oregon, creates an interactive art installation in the Salon Gallery, where she hangs mixed media portraits of 10 women from around the world in the center of the gallery, and uses a gallery wall to write 262 different moments experienced by her 10 subjects. Another “future moments” wall allows viewers to record moments of their own on a chalkboard. Sharpton’s participatory art project reflects her belief that “we are all connected by moments in time.” A graduate of OSU (BFA, 2003) and John F. Kennedy University (MFA, 2007), she has had a number of solo exhibitions in Oregon and California as well as numerous group exhibitions.