FINDINGS: Susie Winton & Rebecca Des Marais
Susie Winton and Rebecca Des Marais
July 11th – August 29th , 2024
Opening Reception Thursday, July 11th, 5:30-7:30 pm (Artist talk 6:15 pm)
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Curated by Julia Fenton and comprised of found objects, Gallery 100 presents the talented work of Susie Winton and Rebecca Des Marais.
About Susie Winton
Susie’s work focuses on the leftovers and cast asides of everyday life, a contemporary archeology of things we know without noticing, unwitting evidence of what we use and what we leave behind, and an exploration of value and worth. She walks and finds tire-flattened small objects and the crumpled mystery of flight weary balloons, and in her studio, the scraps of bins. Once organized and repositioned, these finds acquire new meaning and she, a modicum of order in this unordered world.
Using a variety of mediums and an interest in the discarded and seemingly mundane, Susan Winton has shown locally and nationally. She holds an MFA from Georgia State University, a BFA from Emory University, received fellowships from the Hambidge Center and the Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts, served as university visiting artist, and is presently an instructor at the City of Atlanta’s Chastain Art Center.
About Rebecca Des Marais
Rebecca Des Marais’s work speaks to the frequent & automatic discards of life, both human & natural, and how common actions lead to the accumulation of waste -- some recyclable, most not. Des Marais's early work focused on surface -- those abraded & scarred by human contact or worn by natural forces. Trompe l'oeil facsimiles evolved into the use of rejected & discarded materials accumulated over time and which became, in themselves, the medium of her practice. Nature's ephemeral versus the irreducibility of man-made is the underlying theme of her work along with the recognition that so much 'waste' is automatic & unnoticed.
Des Marais received Bachelors & Masters Degrees from Rhode Island School of Design and University of South Carolina and had a long career in arts administration and gallery management before moving to Atlanta in the mid 1990s. She has assisted many artists with the realization of their exhibitions, notably installation artist Ann Hamilton in Brazil, England, Italy, Sweden & NY and independent curator Mary Jane Jacob with large scale site-specific exhibitions in Charleston, SC, Chicago & Atlanta. From 1996 to 2019, she developed the Youth Art Connection Gallery & Workshop on Auburn Avenue and directed the Cultural Enrichment Program for Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta. Designated as an assemblage artist, Des Marais developed her work in Atlanta at studios in Nexus (now Atlanta Contemporary), the Arts Exchange (now ArtsXchange), Beacon Hills Studios (demolished) & elsewhere and exhibits selectively throughout the Southeast.
About Julia A. Fenton
Julia A. Fenton is a retired curator/gallery director and a practicing artist whose work centers on feminist theory. Her focus in gallery work has been in fostering new talent and in expanding multicultural aesthetics in exhibitions she either curated or brought to Atlanta. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and has been reviewed in Art in America, Sculpture Magazine, ArtNews, and Art Papers. She was founding Editor in Chief of Contemporary Art / Southeast, the first regional publication on southeastern contemporary art, and one of the founders of Art Papers. She was an Observer to the National Women’s Conference of 1977 in Houston TX, chaired by Bella Abzug and opened by First Ladies Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford and Lady Bird Johnson. She was a founding Board Member of Crossroads (located in Lincoln County OR), a non profit re-education program for court-mandated domestic violence offenders and an educational resource for victims of domestic violence.