Nancy Morrow & Erin Wiersma “With/drawn”

A.I.R. Gallery

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A.I.R. Gallery presents With/drawn, a show of new works on paper by Nancy Morrow and Erin Wiersma. The show’s title is a nod to the overlap between Morrow and Wiersma as makers. Their shared position originates with the materiality and process of working on paper and is drawn from their reflections and experiences as individuals.

The imagery in Morrow’s works is the ephemera of a form of dementia that has slowly withdrawn her partner’s former self from her life. Working in transparent layers of watercolor on paper, Morrow covers and discovers the rigid form of this mundane object. This act of searching for a specific form is a response to the waves of clarity and confusion that accompany her partner’s illness.

Another form of searching is embedded in Wiersma’s works on paper. The repetition of her mark making recalls the movement of her body, creating intricate nets and mappings. White lines echo the artist’s movements and present an illustration of an awareness of her body moving in time against a brilliant blue void.

Beginning with the literal process of drawing, as well as a richer understanding of this medium as a form of discovery, Morrow and Wiersma’s works represent two conjoined approaches to abstraction. Morrow dissolves her subjects into washes of colors while Wiersma turns the physical gestures of her body into webbed drawings of spaces layered over time.

Erin Wiersma received her Master of Fine Arts from University of Connecticut, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Messiah College. Wiersma resides in Manhattan, Kansas where she is as an Associate Professor at Kansas State University.

Nancy Morrow received her Master of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from University of Washington. She is currently working in Manhattan, Kansas as an Associate Professor at Kansas State University.