Mary Engel

Marcia Wood Gallery is pleased to announce the seventh solo exhibition of one of Atlanta's most popular artists, Mary Engel. Engel has exhibited her mixed-media animal sculptures at Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta and at national and international art fairs for over a decade, as well as exhibiting in museums and galleries nationwide for over twenty years. A native of Chicago, Mary Engel lives and works in Athens, Georgia, where she received an MFA at the University of Georgia in 1993.

Mary Engel sculpts roughly life-size animal figures – primarily dogs – in all manner of vibrant poses, covered with layers of found objects in arrangements that dazzle the eye.The upcoming exhibition will be a dual representation of new work in Engel's most recent ongoing series of porcelain figurines layered over steel and hydrocal, as well as a return to the early mixed-media, ceramic based works. The conceptual continuities and contrasts of these two bodies of work will provide an informative and stimulating overview of the history of the evolution of Engel's ideas and techniques.

One of the critical elements to the success and longevity of Engel's sculptures is the realism of the animal form and the palpable sense of spirit that the artist evokes through the use of fluid line and form. Whether in the style of the earlier work whose hallmarks are a sleekly defined silhouette and a body of chaotic materials, or that of the recent series, in which the silhouette is broken into a dizzyingly animated edge and the found objects are thematically consistent, the strength of the underlying structure provides focus and balance for the layers of assembled material.

The sculptures of the last few years are highly animated compositions of countless vintage porcelain animal figurines covering a steel and hydrocal form. The larger host figure is overpopulated with a dazzling collection of animal figures ranging in size from minute to surprisingly large - an Ark's worth of animals on one beast. Myriad poking heads, tiny outstretched legs and wings, a terrain of beaks, hooves, tails and a hundred bright little eyes, reach a crescendo of wit and concept that is simultaneously bizarre and engaging. Engel's return as well in this exhibition, to the aesthetic of her earliest works, using materials as varied as costume jewelry, wristwatches, medallions and milagros, volcanic rock and pyrite, children's toys and so on, as the smooth skins or coats of animals, with perhaps less frenetic, but no less compelling, personalities, promises a delightful engagement between kindred spirits.

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