FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Through August 20, 2005

Opening Reception:
Friday, July 25, 7:00 p.m. - 1100 p.m.


AGA Introductions[05],
featuring

JULIA KUBICA:
"Arborographs"

July 15 - August 20, 2005

Marcia Wood Gallery is pleased to announce, in conjunction with the Atlanta Gallery Association’s Introductions[05] series of citywide events, the premiere Atlanta solo exhibitions of two rising young talents on the city’s art scene. Julia Kubica, a Texas–born Atlanta resident who as a member of the True Heart Collaborations artist group was recently nominated as a finalist for The Forward Arts Foundation’s 2005 Emerging Artist of the Year award, presents a body of delicately feminine installations and works on paper, acrylic & fabric, which reveal a broad range of fine-arts and graphic design methods. Meanwhile, Stephanie Dotson’s exhibition of multilayered, tactile and colorful assemblages combining drawing, painting, printmaking, digital design and paper cutouts on surfaces as varied as paper, vellum, felt, fabric and glazed ceramic, follows closely on the heels of her inclusion in the 2005 Atlanta Biennial, curated by Helena Reckitt and presented at The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, and the recent announcement of a full-year artist-in-residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE. Although presented as separate exhibitions, the work of both artists overlaps in intriguing ways, and together may offer a primer of coming trends in the next generation of contemporary art.

Julia Kubica, trained in graphic design at Georgia State University and former student-in-resident at The Center for Experimental Design and Research in Parthey, France, deftly mixes drawing, drafting, printmaking and collage techniques in her artwork, guided by a restraint that lends the work its quiet beauty. Repeated, overlapped, slightly offset arboreal imagery alternates with tracery borrowed from vintage sewing patterns and other iconography of nostalgia, punctuated with light color washes, to ethereal effect. A clean, strong line combines with a exploration of the language of craft and natural forms to create a body of works that draw the viewer in by their elegant composition, and by the self-assured femininity they radiate. Many of her works present themselves complete with transparent cast-acrylic frames, highlighting Kubica’s intention to define your experience of her work precisely by what has willfully been excluded. Kubica creates works that define themselves by their shadows and negative space; as is the case with the work of True Heart Collaborations as a whole, Kubica’s solo works impress upon one as refined, subtle, and confident.

Julia Kubica’s work has been exhibited locally at Saltworks, The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Eyedrum and Youngblood Gallery. Additionally, her work with artist’s group True Heart Collaborations has been seen in installations in vacant homes and warehouses throughout Atlanta, and was considered by many to be the standout piece of curator Joey Orr’s 2005 Shedspace series of citywide neighborhood installations. This exhibition is presented in conjunction with the Atlanta Gallery Association’s Introductions[05] series of citywide events.