Mary McCleary: Voyage

Moody Gallery presents the exhibition Mary McCleary: Voyage. Reception for the Artist Saturday, September 12, 2pm-5pm. Artist Talk September 12 at 3pm. On view through October 17.

Moody Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent collages by Mary McCleary. The exhibition, entitled Voyage, features fifteen collages made between 2009 and 2015, and marks McCleary’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.

Widely known for these complex, three-dimensional figurative collages, McCleary assembles them with a variety of materials including paint, paper, wood, glass, fabric and beads on heavy paper.  These objects are used to construct scenes rich in narrative, bold in color and alluring in texture.

McCleary’s images are modern-day allegories that refer to history, science, and literature in a contemporary context. McCleary uses materials that are often considered trivial and temporal to express ideas about timeless values.

Mary McCleary was born in Houston, Texas in 1951 and currently lives and works in Nacogdoches, Texas.  She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts cum laude in printmaking and drawing from Texas Christian University in 1972 and a Master of Fine Arts in graphics from the University of Oklahoma in 1975.

She is Regent’s Professor of Art Emeritus at Stephen F. Austin State University, where she taught from 1975 to 2005.

She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in museums including at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., MOBIA, New York City, the Grey Gallery at NYU, the Boston Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, the Blaffer Art Museum, Houston, and the San Antonio Museum of Art, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City.  She is also a recipient of a Mid-America Arts Alliance/National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship.

McCleary’s work is in many public collections including those of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, the El Paso Museum of Art, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont, the Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi., and the Wichita Falls Museum of Art at MSU.

Pictured: Voyage  2015  mixed media on paper  22″ x 30″. (detail above, full image below).