Lake Street Studios Center Gallery features Mary O’Neill
From staff reports
Northern Michigan Painter Mary O’Neill will show her latest works at the Lake Street Studios Center Gallery from Aug. 30-Sept. 12, with an opening reception on Friday, Aug. 30 from 6-8 pm. (Center Gallery is open daily from 11 am-5 pm. For information call 231-334-3179 or visit LakeStreetStudiosGlenArbor.com
“My work is created from single-use, post-consumer plastic bags and packaging,” says O’Neill. “You know, the stuff your groceries, carrots and diapers come in. For this show, I’m working thematically with the ideas of chaos and calm. It’s reflective of what’s currently happening in the world. We are confronted with chaos in our leadership everyday and search for calm as an antidote. I’m using the simple shapes of lines and circles to reflect these ideas and how they can reflect both chaos and calm.”
“I’m working with these themes in series of flower imagery, color-scapes, waterscapes and landscapes. It is imagery created using non-traditional materials, which would have ordinarily ended up in a landfill or possibly recycled. It emerged as my own personal response to the disgusting amount of plastic that streams through our lives on a daily basis, and how our mindless consumption of it needs more awareness.”
“My process often starts with a goal in mind, but because the material is relatively unpredictable, I usually end up allowing the material dictate as we go. There is a whole of less frustration that way and process is funner. What may have started out as a landscape, could very well end up at stems for flowers. The process is very fluid and I’m not necessarily always leading the way.”
