Artists Heidi Fowler, Kim Manfredi, and Theo Willis will speak about their work on view in the “_______scape” exhibit at VisArts which runs through August 10th. The individual units of color in Heidi Fowler’s “Plastiscapes” merge at a distance into luminous landscapes. Up close, the landscape collapses into a tight grid of plastic bottle caps and junk mail opening a conversation about painting and ecology. In Kim Manfredi’s enamel paintings, wet paint dripped into wet paint mimics the action of a weather system passing over the surface of the earth. Each drop or spill of liquid results in structures and patterns that resemble deep space and microbiology. To make his “1000 Layer Paintings” Theo Willis methodically and patiently applied one thousand layers of a single type of housepaint to small panels. The results are extraordinary stratascapes of paint. Taking a year to construct, the paintings are transfixing geologic outcrops of paint. In his “Yards” series, Willis considers the fundamental support of painting. The square format suggests a measurable unit or systematized geographical space (like an “acre”) where simple actions and an economy of materials yield endless variations.
