Dodging Dirt : Work by Fay Stanford

Artspace Loveland Gallery
140 W 3rd St. Loveland, CO

October 24th - November 7th, 2016
Opening Reception Friday, November 28th, 2016 with Fay Stanford Artist Talk, and Poetry Reading by Loveland artist Sandra Gisonti. Food by Loveland culinary artist Mercedes Guadalupe. Drinks sponsored by local distilleries Spring44 and CopperMuse.

Fay Stanford on Dodging Dirt:

"It’s not as if I haven’t ever seen The Reaper. Of course I’ve seen The Reaper. Beloved in-laws, grandparents, elderly neighbors, friends of friends have all succumbed. My mother has Alzheimer’s disease which is terminal, and my sister and I have both survived cancer. So far. But I’m sixty-six years old and with the exception of a parakeet and an old hound, I haven’t lost an immediate family member yet. So perhaps this fascination with death is inevitable. I mean, I’m the child of an actuary whose professional life was spent mulling mortality. Death. And taxes. They’re coming for us."

Curated by Amy Joy Hosterman

Fay Stanford employs straightforward, accessible imagery to illustrate her deep examinations of aging and dying. Cutting into pine planks and printing on cotton fabric, she embraces the simplicity of black line and blocks of color to render a legible image which comments on the complex nature and inherent irony in the cycles of life and death that we all experience. The flexible fabric allows for ample continued working once the ink is dry, and she compliments her prints with drawn and painted layers, appliqué, and embroidered elements, sometimes sewing multiple pieces together. These works may be reminiscent of your grandmother’s quilts, yet they exude an unexpected darkness and subtle humor in a compelling narrative style. In contrast to this time-consuming process of layering and stitching, her monotypes satisfy a need for spontaneity, made as quick drawings on her inking plate while she prints the pine blocks. The loose, gestural quality of these prints breathes a refreshing energy and immediacy into her work, bringing full circle our natural cycles of lively exuberance and inevitable decay.

Fay Stanford has been living and working in the Philadelphia area for 25 years. Through her art making she has reported on the sorrows of dealing with dementia, being a tourist in HI., human/wild bird interaction, the perils of raising children, and the perils of raising chickens. Fay holds a BA from Grinnell College and has exhibited in galleries, universities and museums nationally, including Soho20 Gallery in Chelsea, Woodmere Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Villanova University in PA, Fairleigh Dickinson University in NJ, and the Washington County Museum of Art in MD. Awards for her work include a National Endowment for the Humanities Youthgrant, the Main Line Art Center Eliot Raum Prize for Painting, and a First Place prize for her work at the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington.