The Harris Gallery is proud to present a two person exhibition by Los Angeles based artists Keith Lord and Nancy Macko.
Natural Subjects juxtaposes photographic works by Nancy Macko with freestanding and suspended sculptures by Keith Lord. By extracting imagery and material from their immediate environments, these artists create works that possess familiar perceptual cues while defining exciting new territory. Upon entering the exhibition viewers’ senses are engaged with richly textured surfaces, luscious hyper-color and atmospheres that provide quiet intimacies and invite curious investigation.
Working with different types of wood, Keith Lord often begins a piece by selecting and repurposing found objects or material remnants. Lord is drawn to the inherent qualities of wood-exposed grain, natural color and a range of textures. After drawing on his laptop, Lord plans precise incisions that will assemble segments of wood into a vertically oriented sculpture with subtle shifting angles. Attached at the apex of this towering object is a geometric appendage that spirals downward. A gravity defying whimsy replaces the wooden beam’s former functionality. By carefully preserving the natural aesthetics of his materials, Lord’s choreographed manipulations create an elegant balancing act of structural integrity and gestural playfulness.
When gazing at the intensely magnified and cropped garden views of Nancy Macko’s photography, a vibrant world opens for playful exploration and contemplation. Focusing primarily on flowers as they move through their arc from bud to seed, Macko captures her images using a handheld macro lens. She mounts her works on sintra panels with Plexiglas faces, which makes the work immediate as though it could float off of the wall. Some of the floras are in a radiant full bloom, while other specimens are wilting or dry. Within this broad range, viewers are invited to examine subtle nuances of color, texture and form.
Keith Lord received his Bachelors of Fine Arts from California State University, Chico and his Masters of Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, California. Lord has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and abroad at galleries, art centers and museums with exhibitions in Los Angeles, CA; Cleveland, OH; Victoria, B. C. Canada; and Venice, Italy. His work is in numerous public and private collections including the University of La Verne Art Collection, The Norton Family Collection, and The Yale University Art Gallery Collection. In 2001 Lord was a speaker at the Art and Science Forum at the Salk Institute, La Jolla, California.
Nancy Macko received her graduate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. Macko is Professor of Art at Scripps College in Claremont, CA. Her work has been reviewed and written about in Artweek, ArtScene, Artillery, Coast, exposure, Daily Serving, and LA Weekly. Macko’s work is in numerous public collections including: Bell Gallery at Brown University; the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the New York Public Library; the North Dakota Museum of Art; Pomona College Museum of Art; Gilkey Center for Graphic Art, Portland Art Museum; and the RISO Museum of Art.