ATHICA

April 23-May 22, 2022
Material Alchemy: Metal and Color
Curated by Jeremy Taran Diamond, Shaunia Grant, Katie McCullough, and Lilly McEachern

Exhibition and Events at ATHICA, Free and Open to All

• Exhibition Dates: Saturday, April 23- Sunday, May 22, 2022
• Opening Reception: Saturday, April 23, 2022, 6:00-8:00 PM
• Curator/Artist Talk: Monday, April 25, 5:30 PM via Zoom.
• Invited Speaker: Thursday, April 28, 1:00 via Zoom.  Ann Cahoon, Department Head, Jewelry Making and Repair, Boston’s Renowned North Bennet Street School for Craft, Trade and Artisans. “New Paths for Metalsmiths: NBSS Precious Metals Library and Alternative Materials.”  Recording available here.
  
• Music Night: Saturday, May 7, 2022, 7:00 PM. Featuring Joe Leone, Louis Romanos, and Souryadeep Bhattacharyya
• Music Night: Friday, May 13, 2022, 7:00 PM. Featuring Shane Parrish, experimental guitarist.
• Music Night:  Monday, May 16, 2022, 7:00 PM. Featuring Killick and percussionist Ravish Momin

Material Alchemy features artists whose work investigates contemporary practices of metalsmithing, both materially and conceptually. Rising costs of materials and access to necessary tools have caused a paradigm shift in the field, provoking new value systems and methods of consideration. Featuring artists from Athens to Moscow, this exhibition presents colorful trends in metalsmithing, from the wearable to the sculptural.

The curatorial team consists of two MFA metalsmith candidates from the University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art (Jeremy Diamond and Shaunia Grant), artist/educator/ATHICA board/exhibitions committee member (Katie McCullough), and a professional curator/arts coordinator and exhibitions committee member (Lillian McEachern).  They believe the exhibition tells a story about breadth of geographical and demographical representation in a field where biases against metalsmithing and gender can create barriers to acceptance of work that crosses boundaries of media, craft, and the plastic arts.  They appreciate how many of the artists in the exhibition explore use of non-valuable, repurposed, and found materials to reveal or transform the nature of the material through color. The collective exhibition is vibrant and delicate,  intersecting art with craft through concept, execution, and design of objects. Grant posits that emerging metalsmiths are consumed with the relationship between created objects and the body as object.  Adds Diamond, “The exhibition serves to convey multiple connotations of the word ‘metalsmith,’ which can imply different meanings when used as a noun, a verb, and an adjective.

Participating artists hail from across the country and the world.

Material Alchemy: Metal and Color is sponsored in part by The James E. and Betty J. Huffer Foundation and the Georgia Council for the Arts through the appropriations of the Georgia General Assembly. Georgia Council for the Arts also receives support from its partner agency – the National Endowment for the Arts.

More About the Curators

Jeremy Diamond
Jeremy Diamond is a metalsmith and interdisciplinary craft artist based in Athens, Georgia, where they are pursuing their MFA at the University of Georgia after earning their BFA from
the University of North Texas. Diamond’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at New York City Jewelry Week and the Czong Institute of Contemporary Art in Gimpo, South Korea. Outside of the studio, Diamond is an advocate for black people in academia, and works to dismantle the systemic barriers that make higher education inaccessible to black people.
Website:
CV: Jeremy Diamond

Shaunia Grant
Shaunia Grant is an object maker, born and raised in the border town of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Her identity as a queer, indigenous person informs her material language as a maker as she considers assimilated notions of desire. She graduated from New Mexico State University in 2020 with her BFA in Studio Art and is currently attending The School of Art at University of Georgia, pursuing her MFA.

Website:
CV: Shaunia Grant

Katie McCullough
Katie McCullough received her BFA in Painting from the University of Georgia in 2009 and her MFA in Visual Art from Washington University in St. Louis in 2011. In 2012, she co-founded and was the co-curator of Enamel, an artist-run gallery in St. Louis. She has been on the ATHICA Board since 2021 and presently serves as co-chair of its Youth Education Committee.

As an artist, Katie’s work focuses on abstract painting and installations. She views her work as a form of somatic poetry – both spontaneous and provisional – and likens the plasticity of the paint to the built environment, suggesting the temporary and fleeting nature of the material world while relishing the playfulness and pleasure it can bring.
Katie lives in Athens with her husband and three children.

Website:
CV:Katie McCullough

Lillian McEachern
Lilly McEachern of Columbus, GA received a B.A. in journalism with a minor in art history and a certificate in museum studies from The University of Georgia in 2020. She currently works as Exhibitions/Project Coordinator at the Steffen Thomas Museum of Art and at the Lyndon House Arts Center, where she is conducting research on the enslaved population of the Ware-Lyndon Historic House. She has curated exhibitions at the Athens Institute for Contemporary Art, the Lyndon House Arts Center, Steffen Thomas Museum of Art, and Hotel Indigo Athens.

Website:
CV: Lilly McEachern

Press Release: Link

Press: Ornament Magazine, July 2022

Exhibition Catalog:  Flippable | Download PDF, Individual Pages | Website