James Marshall & Aaron Karp

ST. LOUIS — Duane Reed Gallery is excited to showcase the work of James Marshall and Aaron Karp. Although different in choice of medium, these two artists both create visually powerful work that masterfully utilizes texture and surface quality. Furthermore, the relationship between these two artists work in terms of content is equally compelling: Karp approaches his paintings from the perspective of simultaneously concealing and revealing, playing out the metaphor that relates directly to his process of building and fracturing layers of paint. James Marshall’s ceramic pieces explore the quality of the liminal nature they represent. These objects exist just past the threshold of the subliminal realm at the point of emergence and its resulting openness and ambiguity. This relationship, existent in both aesthetic and philosophy, establishes a narrative between bodies of work, making for an engaging and stimulating experience for the viewer.

JAMES MARSHALL — James Marshall has been a highly successful exhibiting artist, designer and art educator whose education in the ceramic arts began with a pottery apprenticeship in Guatemala while living with the Quiche, a Mayan Native American tribe during his service in the Peace Corps. He received his MFA in 1979 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor where he studied with John Stevenson and Rudolph Arnheim. James is currently Head of Ceramics at Santa Fe Community College, where he has created and built one of the most successful ceramics programs and facilities, both public and private, in the state.

AARON KARP — Aaron Karp is a practicing artist of more than 40 years. Originally from New York, he has lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, since 1979 where he worked as an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at the University of New Mexico until 1984. For the thirty years since leaving the University he has painted full time, has exhibited his work extensively, and has received recognition through a number of awards, grants, and artist-in-residencies.