January 23- February 13
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 23 7PM-10PM
Popps Packing is pleased to present “Chimera”, a two person exhibition of paintings, drawings, collages, and collaborative works by Adrian Hatfield and Amy Sacksteder.
Drawing inspiration form his musings on mass extinction and current environmental issues, Adrian Hatfield samples and recombines elements from art work of the past to create works that are intended to be sad, unnerving, yet beautiful and oddly hopeful.
“A mass extinction is an enormous global reduction of animal and plant species in a geologically short period of time. These events, of which there have been five, with arguably a current sixth occurring, decimate the global ecosystem. They also, however, create under-populated niches, which lead to the explosive evolution of new species. In these periods of creation, new species develop entirely from the remaining survivors that came before them”-Adrian Hatfield
Amy Sacksteder’s fluid process of investigation and making strike both a balance and tension between outward and inward looking selves, resulting in work that is essentially diaristic- involving a fracturing of place and time-taking pieces of experience and reassembling them into new, conflated impressions and narratives.
“My paintings, drawings, and installations embody the inability to convey the significance of an event or the impact of a place. Therefore I think the actual content of the work resides in the attempt, the trying—often futilely—to communicate meaning. The work draws upon the traditions of landscape painting and natural science illustration, and incorporates the visual language of maps, diagrams, and artifacts, as a way of exploring our connection—many times via objects—to specific places and occurrences. Compelled by the variety of ideas about and human interactions with the land and landscape, I begin to investigate personal and universal significance of place.”- Amy Sacksteder
Amy Sacksteder lives and works in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where she is an Associate Professor of Drawing and Painting at Eastern Michigan University. She received a BA in English from the University of Dayton in 2001 and her MFA in painting from Northern Illinois University in 2004. Selected exhibitions include 2739 Edwin (Hamtramck); Threewalls (Chicago); The Urban Institute for Contemporary Art (Grand Rapids); Champion Contemporary (Austin); the Drawing Room (Budapest); SÍM Gallery (Reykjavík); and KunstraumTapir (Berlin). She has attended artist residencies in Illinois, Newfoundland, Southern France, Philadelphia, Budapest, Reno, Reykjavík, and Berlin. Sacksteder’s work has been sited in New American Paintings and the Chicago Tribune and her recent drawings are featured in the Drawing Center’s online Artist Registry and Viewing Program.Amy Sacksteder curated the international exhibition Island: 22 Artists on Iceland at Eastern Michigan University and ‘CAVE Gallery in Detroit, and in 2015 she co-curated Atmosphere: Artists’ Responses to Space(s), again at EMU.
Adrian Hatfield received his B.F.A. from The Ohio State University in 1996 and his M.F.A. from Ohio University in 2003. He has been a member of the faculty at the James Pearson Duffy Department of Art and Art History at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI for the last 10 years. Hatfield’s works are included in the public collections of The University of Michigan, The South Bend Museum of Art, Northern Arizona University Art Museum, and The University of Iceland in Reykjavik, Iceland. Solo exhibition venues include The South Bend Museum of Art, South Bend IN, ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL and the Northern Arizona University Art Museum, Flagstaff, AZ. Two-person and small group exhibitions venues include The Butcher’s Daughter, New York, NY, Jeffrey Leder Gallery, New York, NY and Jack the Pelican Presents, New York, NY.
