Artists Archives of the Western Reserve

Denise Buckley, Yang Yang, 2015, Cast bronze and welded steel, 29 x 10 x 10 inches, Collection of AAWR.

This January, the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve is pleased to announce the arrival of a new exhibition featuring Denise Buckley and Kathy Skerritt—two women who have been staples of the Cleveland arts community for over thirty years. Newly archived to AAWR’s permanent collection, both artists push the boundaries of their materials to unearth their subjects’ hidden internal realities.

Skerritt is a process painter known for working her highly textured canvases to their limits. By layering the pigments until they crack and buckle, Skerritt creates striking patterns that are simultaneously “biological, geological, anatomical, metallic, and/or fluid.” She describes her work as an “investigation of what it is that is continuously being revealed from behind, under, or within form. My artistic intention is to connect the viewer beyond the surface to the substance that underlies appearances, to approach a vision of that most fundamental Truth.”

Skerritt’s work reflects connections between the natural world and the human body. While traveling around the globe, she became “deeply influenced by hours spent gazing at the Earth from airplanes…This led me to notice common patterns across enormous expanses of the planet’s surface” and “stimulated my sense of the Earth as a living system. Later studies of human anatomy revealed exciting correspondences between rivers and the circulatory system, forests and the bronchial tree of the lungs, topographies and the organ, skeletal, and fluid systems which make us all.”

Denise Buckley’s innovative use of clay, bronze, and steel also reveals the interior of her subjects. Both elegant and haunting, Buckley creates figurative objects she describes as “sometimes beautiful and sometimes not. The work is personal yet speaks to universal themes of beauty, power, hardship and compassion as defined by different cultures, both past and present…I people watch trying to discover in their facial features their inner character and temperament…I try to capture their souls.”

Materials are profoundly important to Buckley. She describes, “Although, the physiognomy of people captures my attention, the materials I use bring the pieces to life. I love the processes used in sculpture and I get lost in the visceral experience of [the media]. The past few years I have welded steel into figurative pieces. No matter the process or technique, my approach to figurative sculpture is to capture the human spirit.”

A virtual opening reception will be held on Zoom, Friday, January 22, from 7:00pm to 8:30pm.

Also on view this winter is the NewNow, Northeast Ohio’s premier biannual competitive art exhibition, now rescheduled to January. Judged by Cat Sheridan, director of The Ohio Arts Council’s Riffe Gallery, the show is a celebration of the resilient spirit of the regional arts community to be held in Tri-C’s Gallery East. For show dates and information about the virtual opening reception and awards ceremony, please visit artistsarchives.org.

Kathy Skerritt, Geo-Biologic First Manifestation of the Entrance to the Holy Jumping Off Place (II of III), 2006, Mixed media on canvas, 16 x 16 inches, Collection of AAWR.

ABOUT BODY / ABOUT FACE | NOVEMBER 19-JANUARY 16

VIRTUAL OPENING RECEPTION 7-8:30PM ON ZOOM THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19

THE NEWNOW | JANUARY SHOW DATES AND VIRTUAL RECEPTION TBA

DENISE BUCKLEY AND KATHY SKERRITT | JANUARY 22-MARCH 13

VIRTUAL RECEPTION 7-8:30PM ON ZOOM FRIDAY, JANUARY 22