Top: Hello Goya (baseball) 2011, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches • Bottom: Hello Guernica (Dance Party) 2012, oil on canvas, 10 x 20 inches

paintings
September 4–28

Hello Masterpiece

Artist Leslie Holt is fast gaining attention for her meticulous reproductions of art masterpieces that happen to include the 20th century Japanese icon, Hello Kitty. Holt’s paintings are painted on diminutive

4 x 6 inch to 10 x 20 inch canvases.With the reputation as the first fine artist to succeed in repurposing the Kitty icon, Holt makes a larger statement regarding value as her paintings resemble commemorative postcards. Art history professor Ivy Cooper comments, “Hello Kitty gets to treat art history like her personal playground… it takes an artist with Holt’s humor and formidable eye to layer such familiar references and make them say something new.”

Gallery Talk:

Thursday, September 13 • 5 p.m.
Reception following to 6:30 p.m.

Stairway to Heaven, 2007, eight-color archival pigment inks on Hahnemuhle rag paper

Their Assigned Mission:  Operation Iraqi Freedom

Stacy Pearsall’s outstanding portfolio of combat images earned her the title Photographer of the Year both in 2003 and 2007 respectively from the National Press, Photographers Association. She is only the second woman since 1967 to receive this honor.

Pearsall enlisted in the U.S. Air Force at 17 and negotiated her passion for photography into her commitment by receiving an Air Force guarantee to use her talent on the front lines. She spent the first four years of her enlistment as a U-2 spy plane intelligence film processor and her only camera work was personal. But in January of 2002 she entered Combat Camera Squadron. After being wounded in action in 2003 and 2007 in Iraq, Pearsall was medically retired. She began advocacy work through programs such as the Wounded Warrior Program, Real Warriors, Bob Woodruff Foundation, and the Wounded Warrior Games.

Her body of work has been celebrated by Time, Newsweek, New York Times, CNN, BBC, LA Times, USA Today,  and an Oscar-nominated PBS documentary: Operation Home Coming.

In conjunction with Vanderbilt Homecoming events:
Friday, October 26
Closing Reception 5 p.m.

Black Cat, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 72 inches

signs, patterns, animals

Nashville-based artist Patrick DeGuira describes his work as nonlinear, and based in a variety of mediums using pre-digital sign-making techniques to achieve a level of handmade precision. The pieces start with words and phrases which are then layered and disrupted through complex systems of pattern, geometry, and editing processes.

He states, “I am interested in ideas that convey a phenomenological disruption or reduction. My work is often based on family histories, childhood experiences, or on familiar domestic subject matter.”

Gallery Talk:
Thursday, November 8 • 5 p.m.
Reception following to 6:30 p.m.

Richard Odom, 2011, Odom’s Chairs, mixed media, size variable

Prison Galleries: Imagining Justice from the Inside Out

That wall isn’t there just to keep me in, but to keep you out. —Tyrone W., prisoner and former participant in the Inside Out Prison Exchange

In the spirit of Martin Luther King Day, Sarratt Gallery exhibits outsider art work in conjunction with members of the Vanderbilt University Department of Philosophy and prisoners on death row at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. The United States incarcerates more of its own citizens than any other country in the world, and we are the only Western democracy to retain the death penalty. In the spirit of dialogue, Sarratt Gallery presents a series of paintings, sketches, and sculptures created by prisoners on death row, many of whom have been participating in a weekly philosophy discussion group. The artwork seeks to convey the prison environment and to explore the possibilities for living, thinking, working, and creating while on death row.

Gallery Reception:
Monday, January 21• 5 p.m.
Reception following to 6:30 p.m.

Presented as a part of Vanderbilt Martin Luther King Day with Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration and the Age of Colorblindness
Monday, January, 21, 7 p.m. in Langford Auditorium.
Funded in part by the Creative Campus Innovation Grant Program

Carpet Auction, 2009, cardboard, mixed media, 13 x 12 x 9 inches / photo: Julie Klima

mixed media
February 18–March 25

Ana Serrano is a first-generation, Mexican American born in Los Angeles, California. Inspired by both of these cultural contexts, she creates work utilizing a variety of mediums including drawing, collage, sculpture, and motion. Her work references those in low socioeconomic positions, with particular interest in the customs and beliefs, as well as the architecture, fashion, and informal economies present within this segment of society.

A theme explored in her work is the socio-cultural aspects of drug trafficking, and the branding and acceptance of the drug lord lifestyle.

Gallery Talk:
Thursday, February 21 • 5:00 p.m.
Reception following to 6:30 p.m.

The Hawser Series

From Left to Right: Snag, 2011, archival ink jet print mounted on brushed aluminum, 16 x 22 inches • Tumult, 2009, charcoal on paper, 50 x 38 inches • Core to Core, 2010, charcoal on paper, 75 x 38 inches

Huguette May took four years to complete The Hawser Series after receiving a python-sized object by the last master rope maker in New Bedford, John E. Ruggles in 2006. Using charcoal on heavy weight Stonehenge paper of 50 x 38 inches, May’s vision can be safely described as sweepingly dramatic and her handling of materials as virtuosic.

The Hawser Series, consisting of twelve drawings, is a conceptual and perceptual tour-de-force that experientially takes the viewer through richly layered intellectual, emotional and psychic currents that almost have Shakespearean dimensions, so cunningly interwoven and layered.

Sarratt Gallery is pleased to exhibit the series and May’s archival prints with John Ruggles original rope on exhibit.

Gallery Talk:
Friday, April 5 • 5 p.m.
Reception following to 6:30 p.m.