HEDGE Gallery is thrilled to present Natural Phenomena, a group exhibition featuring encaustic painters Christopher Kier and Susan Squires alongside ceramicist Lauren Herzak-Bauman.
Through research, experimentation and exploration, the artists create paintings and sculptures that are influenced by natural growth forms, sacred icons and architecture. Their processes are rooted in reverence for mediums, such as beeswax, raw pigments and clay. The artists rely on the transformative process that takes place as their materials are altered by heating, scraping, adding and removing. The final results are artworks that shift and endure, and reference primitive, spiritual themes.
Originally from Toronto, Ontario, Christopher Kier creates sensual and earthly paintings with encaustic surfaces that imply a sculptural presence. He evokes the mysterious qualities of old ruins, relics, homes and totemic objects.
“My work presents what I consider to be an architectural or totemic "echo". Topographical environments and reliquaries are created with wax, graphite, oil pastel and paint, nurturing my preoccupations with place, time, and the human imprint onto the natural scape."
Cleveland based artist Susan Squires has been developing her encaustic process over the last 20 years. Addressing the mind/body/spirit continuum, Squires displays a deep reverence for the past, yet the work is confidently grounded in the present. Her geometric abstractions are encaustic/mixed media works which incite quiet meditations with psychological and spiritual implications.
“I believe that an innate sense of “the sacred” has been diminished in our wealth/power focused culture, so I search for meaning and our true place in the Universe. My work is influenced by dialogue between ancient ways of knowing and our modern world view.”
Through layering and repetition, Lauren Herzak- Bauman’s ceramic and porcelain works slowly reveal themselves. Her studio, located in the Lake Erie Screw Factory, is full of pieces that move between scale and various materials, such as fabric and porcelain, that influence her pieces to evolve over time. For surface inspiration, she looks to natural phenomena, such as moving water, rock striations, and star clusters. Currently her work is shown at 313 Space in High Point Market, NC and she is collaborating on public art and commissions, broadening her range of concepts through installation pieces.
“Drawing on my background in sculpture, my forms take inspiration from abstract art and architecture. I follow curiosity, exploring how clay and other materials respond to touch, pressure, and fire.”