Art Big and Small

The Swampscott artist works big and small.

Adriana “Gigi” Mederos likes variety, too, and color.

All those elements are in the Swampscott artist's work, being shown through July 7 at the Khan Gallery and Studio on Rocky Neck in Gloucester.

Some of her art is abstract; some representational. It might stand alone as a drawing, painting, or print; or it might mix elements.

It might appear on a small card or a big canvas.

No matter the type or its size, the subjects connect to her Venezuelan roots.

She grew up on the coast, Maracaibo, Venezuela, and traveled widely in the country with her father, mother and her sisters. 

The country is the size of Texas but includes mountains, desert, jungle and coast. A great variety.

The family traveled in their 1962 Plymouth Valiant, white with a red interior. They owned it for 15 years, and she hears that it is still rambling over the streets of her home city.

Her father, a geologist who studied pollen fossils, had a saying.

“You can not travel like a suitcase,” she said.

Meaning it is best to be open to change and the world around you, she said. The world in Venezuela is various, colorful and full of sun.

At home there were microscopes to look into.

“We use to put everything under the microscope,” she said from her studio at the back of her Stanley Road home.

Some people see a world within in her art, activity at the molecular level. She likes to play with the macro and the micro.

“I like playing with the concept, it is something you see in all my art,” she said.

She will work close up on a painting and a little dot she applies looks huge to her.

"What you see as a little chicklet is to me bigger than a soccer ball,” she said.

Her first sale as a 14-year-old girl in Venezuela was small, a little set of gift tags.

She turned the small sale into something big, a business.

She has lived in Swampscott for six years, volunteering at Stanley School and the Middle School where she developed a papyrus workshop for Egyptian studies.

Locally, she has shown her work at.

Her work is also shown around the world, most recently in Indonesia and at the Museum of The Americas in Miami, according to her publicist, Stevie Black.

Her time living behind the 5th fairway at the Tedesco Country Club has been very creative, she said.

They get lots of pings, from errant golf balls, and she gets lots of inspiration, big and small.

More informations:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=228616483830841 
or through her facebook page 
http://www.facebook.com/adriana.mederos

Details:

Khan Studio 
77 Rocky Neck G3 
Gloucester MA 01930 
(857) 891-9054

Exhibition: June 24th through July 7th 2011 
Gallery open Wednesday through Sunday weekly 
Noon to 8 p.m.

Meet the artist 
July 2nd, 3rd, & 4th