Emily Payne: Heave Heft l Weave Weft

Emily Payne

Heave Heft l Weave Weft

Emily Payne Heave Heft l Weave Weft JANUARY 28 - FEBRUARY 28, 2017 Reception for the artist: Saturday, February 4, 5:30 - 7:30pm Front Cover: Emily Payne: Weave: Graphite, (detail), graphite on book boards, 40 x 60 in Back Cover: Emily Payne Installation, Seager Gray Gallery

Photo Credit: Dana Davis Direct inquiries to: Seager Gray Gallery 108 Throckmorton Avenue Mill Valley, CA 94941 415-384-8288 seagergray.com

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Catalog can be purchased through the gallery for $20 plus handling and shipping.

Email us at art@seagergray.com

When the time came for me to work with larger spaces, I conceived them as gardens, not as sites with objects but as relationships to a whole.

Isamu Noguchi

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Aristotle

Emily Payne Light to Dark Shroud, 2017 graphite on book boards 84 x 21 x 22 in

Emily Payne Heave Heft l Weave Weft Working with books, book parts, wire and steel, Emily Payne’s exhibition, Heave Heft l Weave Weft examines the ways that art transforms the space around it. When approached about an upcoming exhibition in the gallery, she did not focus solely on creating a body of work, but considered carefully the environment the work would inhabit. Her concern was about relationships - between the work and the environment, between one work and another as well as the juxtaposition of space, shadow and light created by the whole.

“I have always been keenly aware of balance,” said the artist, “and in this show, I am playing with gradations of density and weightlessness, darkness and light, two- and threedimensionality.” In Weave Graphite and Weave Wire, for example we see the relationship between a 3 dimensional sculpture and its visual imprint on a two dimensional work made of book boards and graphite. In the exhibition, the wire work creates a shadowed grid on the wall that relates directly to the spectre of that same grid that operates as negative space on the masterfully modulated graphite drawing. The imprint of shadow on the wall, counterbalanced by an imprint of light on the companion work recalls patterns in nature. The patterned impressions repeat themselves throughout the exhibition giving the viewer a singular sensation of spaciousness and order.

Payne’s ingenious work with book boards and book covers began when she received her MFA in printmaking and book arts at San Francisco State University. She found herself continually drawn to the materials as sculpture and began to assemble them in ways that celebrated their innate qualities while offering a surface she could draw and paint upon. Her work with wire began when she had an internship in Ireland with scholar and artist Jean McMann whose PHD work centered around the Loughcrew Cairns in Ireland. Payne drew inspiration from the line drawings on stone and the ironwork in the fences – the positive and negative juxtaposition stayed with her as well as the concept of environment as art.

Emily Payne Wire Shroud, 2016 steel wire 78 x 51 x 2 in

Objects in space are not a new concept for Payne. She grew up with a Ruth Asawa sculpture in her home and knew the artist when she was growing up. Her uncle, writer Mervin Lane attended Black Mountain College in its most fertile and experimental period and the young Asawa and Payne’s mother, Nina became lifelong friends. Nina Payne was an accomplished poet and fiber artist in her own right and in 1975 the family moved from Mill Valley to Amherst, MA where her mother was a professor of creative writing at Hampshire College. In 1996, UMass Amherst had an exhibition of Nina Payne’s waxed linen sculpture. The repetitive patterned stitches and shapes against the wall perhaps a precursor of her daughter’s fascination with pattern and modulated simple design.

Payne is fearless in the studio, endlessly experimenting with ideas and objects that are entirely original and yet adhere to some instinctive order in nature. Her small wire Beacon sculptures, wide at the bottom and narrow at the top relate to her more complex Shroud works in wire and book cover. Her large Light to Dark Shroud a major work with the upper “planks” of narrow light book boards cascade down to beautifully drawn wider expanses that move away from the ceiling onto an elevated surface. The effect becomes a 3 dimensional study in perspective with the foreground coming toward the viewer while the lighter background simulates a vanishing point.

While each object in the exhibition works individually and is designed to interact with whatever space is around it, there is no substitute for experiencing this exhibition in its entirety in the gallery. It is there that the artist’s singular aesthetic and ordered universe can best be absorbed and the clear and satisfying vision that has guided the work can be most keenly appreciated.

- Donna Seager, January, 2017

Emily Payne Weave, 2016 steel wire 31 x 75 x 10 in

Emily Payne Weave (graphite), 2016 graphite on book boards 40 x 60 in

Emily Payne Weave Sample (graphite), 2017 graphite on book boards 26 x 24 in

Emily Payne Weave Sample, 2016 11 x 10 x 1 in

Emily Payne Optical, 2016 graphite on book boards 40 x 40 in

Emily Payne Dark Visible 2, 2016 steel wire 11 x 11 x 8 in

Emily Payne, Dark Visible Series, 2016 steel wire 7 x 8 x 1 in (variable)

Emily Payne Two Beacons, 2016 steel wire 28 x 24 x 16 in

Emily Payne Light Shroud, 2016 book covers, book boards 60 x 18 x 17 in

Emily Payne Atlas, 2013 steel wire, trace paper 36 x 36 x 36 in

Emily Payne Heave, 2017 wire 32 x 40 x 7 in

Emily Payne Tumble, 2017 graphite and gouache on book boards 60 x 60 x 1 in

Emily Payne Almost Night, 2015 book covers on book boards 54 x 56 in

Emily Payne Arch, 2015 graphite on book boards 34 x 37 in

Emily Payne Singular Arch, 2016 graphite on book boards 57 x 46 in

Emily Payne Basic Facts of, 2016 steel wire, book covers, trace paper 14 x 14 x 1 in

Emily Payne Prism Pinwheel, 2016 steel wire, book covers, trace paper 21 x 21 x 1 in

Emily Payne Dice Pinwheel, 2016 steel wire, book covers, trace paper 35 x 35 in

Emily Payne The Winged Horse, 2016 steel wire, book covers, trace paper 35 x 35 in

Emily Payne Palm, 2016 steel wire, book covers, trace paper 11 x 7 x 1 in

Emily Payne Coil, 2017 graphite on book boards 9.5 x 7 x 1

Emily Payne Frond, 2017 steel 20 x 20 x 3 in

Emily Payne Book Frond, 2016 book covers, book boards 12 x 16 x 1 in

Emily Payne Light Visible Series, 2016 steel, wire, trace paper 7 x 9 x 6 in (variable)

EMILY PAYNE b. San Francisco, CA

The Art of the Book: Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA ArtMRKT, San Francisco: Bay Area contemporary art fair, Seager Gray Gallery

EDUCATION

On View: New Works by Kala, group show Kala-fornia: State of the Art 2 benefit, Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA

M.F.A. Printmaking and Book Arts, 1999, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA B.A. Honors in English and Women’s Studies, 1988, Oberlin College, OH

2011 Full Circle: Solo Exhibition, Donna Seager Gallery, San Rafael, CA The Art of the Book: Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA Codex International Book Fair & Symposium, UC: Berkeley Aqua Art Miami, with Seager Gray Gallery in Miami

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 2017 Emily Payne: New Work - Solo Exhibition, Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA

2015 Solo exhibition of book works and paintings used in fabric designs. Introduction of Fall 2015 collection of fabrics designed with Erica Tanov, Erica Tanov, Berkeley, CA

Reconstructions: a group show of altered book works, Conrad Wilde Gallery, Tucson, AZ

Habitat: a group show of Bay Area contemporary artists, Bank of Commerce, Lafayette, CA

ArtMRKT, San Francisco: Bay Area contemporary and modern art fair, Seager Gray Gallery

2010

The Art of the Book: Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA

Aqua Art Miami, International Art Fair, Miami Represented by Donna Seager Gallery, San Rafael

ArtMRKT, San Francisco: Bay Area contemporary and modern art fair, Kala Art institute, Berkeley, CA

Line Up: group show of self-portraits by 16 local artists, Artspace, Santa Rosa

One of a group of Kala artists featured at The Gardener, Berkeley: ongoing

Groundswell, juried group exhibit. Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA

Unbound: a group exhibition of artwork made from books , Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA

Material Matters: group show, Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA

2009

Context Art Miami, Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA ArtMRKT, San Francisco: Bay Area contemporary and modern art fair, Seager Gray Gallery Lure: summer group exhibition, SFMOMA Artist Gallery, San Francisco, CA

Solo exhibition of wire sculptures and paintings, SFMOMA Artist Gallery, San Francisco, CA Seamarks: two-person show of new “Basin” paintings, Cecile Moochnek Gallery, Berkeley, CA Gift of Art, Annual Group Exhibition, 2001-09, Cecile Moochnek Gallery, Berkeley, CA Hover: a site-specific solo sculpture installation, Erica Tanov, Berkeley, Ca

On View: New Works by Kala, group show Kala-fornia: State of the Art 3 benefit, Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA 2012 Solo exhibition of book works and paintings used in fabric designs. Introduction of Fall 2012 collection of fabrics designed with Erica Tanov, Erica Tanov, Berkeley, CA

239: an indoor sculpture and painting installation Art at the Cheese Factory, Petaluma, CA

2014 Womens’ Work: group show of eight women artists, Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA The Art of the Book, Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA 2013

Haven: an outdoor sculpture installation Art at the Cheese Factory, Petaluma, CA

Juried group exhibition, Gallery Route One, Pt. Reyes Station, Ca For earlier exhibitions and honors, check our website