Solo exhibition at Marcia Wood Gallery, November 20 - January 3, 2009. installation images

Mary Engel has exhibited her mixed-media animal sculptures at Marcia Wood Gallery for over a decade. Originally from Chicago and currently living and working in Athens, GA, her work has shown and been reviewed extensively nationally since 1986. Engel's work is held in numerous important private collections, as well as institutions including Children’s Healthcare of Scottish Rite in Atlanta, The Arthur Blank Family Foundation, the Detroit Zoo, the Disney Corporation and the President’s Collection of the University of Georgia. Engel's work has also been presented and received with overwhelming response at numerous important international art fairs, including Pulse Miami, Art Chicago, and ART(212) NY. Museum exhibitions include Macon Museum of Arts & Sciences, Macon, GA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Atlanta, GA, Huntsville Museum of Art, Huntsville, AL, Asheville Museum of Art, Asheville, NC, and Fine Arts Museum of the South, Mobile, AL.

Mary Engel's over-the-top animal figures are startling. Large in scale and in commanding poses, they are covered with layers of found objects in dazzling compositions that are simultaneously charming, bizarre and somewhat disturbing. The current body of work by this Georgia artist reaches an exhilarating level of wit and concept that is particularly animated and arresting. Engel covers the surfaces of her roughly life-size animal figures with a collection of vintage full-figure porcelain animal figurines. The upcoming exhibition will be a dual representation of new work in Engel’s most recent ongoing series of porcelain figurines layered over steel and hydrocal, as well as a return to the early mixed-media, ceramic based works. The conceptual continuities and contrasts of these two bodies of work will provide an informative and stimulating overview of the history of the evolution of Engel’s ideas and techniques.