MARY JANE PARKER’s work combines printmaking techniques with other media including drawing and cut paper.

Ms. Parker received her B.F.A from Louisiana State University, M.A. and M.F.A. Studio Art with Printmaking emphasis from Illinois State University. She was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship in 2007; a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship in 1990 and 2001, a National Endowment for the Arts/Southern Arts Federation Award for Excellence, an NEA Independent Study Fellowship, a Surdna Foundation Arts Teacher’s Fellowship and project grants from the Louisiana Division of the Arts.

Ms. Parker’s work is part of the permanent collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, the LSU Museum of Art and the Center for Book Arts in New York and numerous private collections. Ms. Parker is chair of the Visual Arts Department at the New Orleans Center for Creative where she also teaches.

She is represented in New Orleans by Arthur Roger Gallery. Her professional website is: www.maryjaneparkerart.com.

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Trace

Mary Jane Parker

Opening May 27th 2014, 7 pm

My mixed media work pairs images found in nature with the human body. Plants that resemble lace, images of lichen and mold patterns are layered over faces, bubble from the top of the head or cover a body like a disease. I have been fascinated by the studies of hysteria from the 1800’s and my interest in the subject has manifested itself in the work presented in Trace. In Trace, digital images, screen and gravure prints and drawings created by layering photographed lichen patterns and lace over the face, hands and body of women result in images that hint at the psychological storms brewing in their heads.

One of the large installations in the show, “Mementos” was initially inspired by the masses of foliage that blanketed the New Orleans landscape in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Struck by the natural patterns of vines and how they decorated the surfaces of the city, I began photographing, drawing and cutting stencils of them. In “Mementos,” faces of anonymous people are grouped with prints of pressed plants and heirloom doilies reminiscent of the nostalgic groupings that often decorate personal spaces. Lace doilies or plants obscure the faces or reveal only a hint of them. The installation is a lush, yet slightly uneasy collision of patterns, keepsakes, nature and the disquiet of suppressed memories.