News from Alumni Aaron McNamee

Aaron McNamee  (B.A. 2004) is having great success as an artist in his new home of New Orleans. His work has recently been acquired by the New Orleans Museum of Art and by the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation in Los Angeles. Below are the press release for his solo exhibit at the prestigious Heriard-Cimino Gallery as well as links to some articles and interviews with the artist as well as website. Congratulations Aaron!!

NEW ORLEANS – Heriard-Cimino Gallery presents Between the Pages, mixed sculptures by Aaron McNamee. This Opening is in conjunction with Whitney White Linen Night and will be on view August 4 through September 24, 2012. A reception to meet the artist will be held on Saturday, August 4th, from 6 until 9 p.m.  The public is invited.  Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 until 5, or by appointment.

This exhibition could not be more timely! Aaron McNamee presents one entire and complete year of the Times-Picayune daily newspaper, presented month by month in individual panels – a premonition perhaps of things to come. The New Orleans newspaper as we have known it, first established one hundred seventy-five years ago, has now become extinct – the morning ritual of New Orleanians gone, as well as the artist’s performative daily ritual of utilizing the city’s daily newspaper to create his sculptures.

About the Exhibition:  The printed words and images of newspapers, magazines, and comic books is a primary component in McNamee’s work.  His fastidious building of his sculptures page by page, leaf by leaf, paper and glue, becomes blurred, denying any specific information of content. The colors and words intermingle, bleeding through layer upon layer. The result, a painting without paint. McNamee utilizes the New Orleans Times-Picayune, complete years of American Rifleman, Mother Earth News, Road and Track, Smithsonian and The Incredible Hulk, Legends of the DC Universe, and Professor Xavier and the X-Men.

The labored repetition of aligning and gluing each piece of paper seems to be a kind of meditation. The viewer experiences the alchemical result, the transmutation of the familiar into the sublime.

Aaron McNamee received his undergraduate degree from Eastern Oregon University and his M.F.A. from University of New Orleans. Since his moving to New Orleans five years ago, the artist has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions. This is his first solo exhibition at Heriard-Cimino Gallery. The artist lives and works in New Orleans, LA.

Heriard-Cimino Gallery website:

http://www.heriardcimino.com/current_x/cx1.html