FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

George Long
"Gift Basket"
May 14 - June 20, 2009
Opening Reception: Thursday May 14, from 7 - 9pm

Marcia Wood Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by George Long, his third at Marcia Wood Gallery. George Long received his BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1995 and currently lives and works in Atlanta.

George Long says his works are “metaphors for things people do emotionally and psychologically,” using his own experience as a reflection of all of human nature.

Long’s first exhibition at Marcia Wood Gallery, “8 x 8,” in 2004, featured an installation of over 500 mixed-media paintings on panel installed in grids along the walls. These small square paintings of mixed media – incorporating drawing, resin, found images, scrap metal and so on – affect a compelling intersection of painting, sculpture and installation. For the upcoming exhibition, the latest work in this series will be joined by larger works exploring similar iconography,

Reminiscent of quilt patches as well as pages from an artist’s journal, the works have a compelling intimate quality that is emphasized both through their scale and through the fragmented aspect of a story being told in bits and pieces. Long’s process in creating these works is related to the process his Grandmother used to make quilts. Long elaborates, “She made her own aesthetic decisions, and made her piece out of necessity. A worn out pillow case, a wedding dress scrap, an apron's extra yard- these are the remnants that my grandmother would use to piece together her quilts. As single squares they simply represented a moment in time, yet together they tell a story of not only that year or decade, but the lives of her family, friends, and environment.” Long in turn uses his environment and experiences as source material. As a result, everything is fodder. Scraps from custom metal work, drawings from his dreams, and remnants from his daily life are collaged into these paintings creating an unconventional personal narrative.

Since his first exhibition at Marcia Wood Gallery in 2004, George Long has had a one man exhibit at the Columbus Museum of Art, GA, exhibited in the Jacksonville Museum of Art’s “Activating Space: Sculpture as Environment” exhibition, curated by George Kinghorn, been given a prestigious residency at the International Kunstler Kolonie in Nuremburg, Germany, among others.