Feels Like Home by Shirley Mariani
‘FEELS LIKE HOME’ by Shirley Mariani
Opening Reception March 4th, 3-5pm
EXHIBITION
March 1 – May 1, 2018
RECEPTION
March 4, 2018
3 – 5pm
LOCATION
Avenue
3361 Mission Street, San Francisco
Please join my Mom and Family for her first Solo Art Exhibition
Shirley Mariani Artist Statement
Shirley Mariani (b.1941, California) grew up in Georgia and on the family farm in a small Midwestern town. Her imagination was influenced by an emblematic horizon that was offered the possibilities of bright lights and big dreams, beyond the American farmlands. Journeys across the states and moving often brought many tales, opportunities, and changed her life.
Art is a medium in which Mariani expresses herself by bringing memories of her past into her present life. She loves abstract and calls it both a piece of heaven and a representation of herself. “I think I’ve been abstract my whole life and it’s a representation of how I see all things. I did abstract things. In fact, I think my whole life has been an abstraction. As a child on the farm I would work in the garden and I would think, vegetables are strange, unique, curious. Whereas the barn, which you see often in my work, represented stability for me.”
Reflections of rural living are prominent in Mariani’s art works. From chairs, rockers, porches, and porch swings to barns, farm animals, gardens and fields, clotheslines and family, she creates abstracted patchwork quilts out of her past.
www.shrileymariani.com
Bio
Shirley Mariani was born in Glendale, California and spent her youth in Georgia and on a farm in Illinois before returning to California. She graduated from San Jose State in 1964 with a B.A. in Art, with an emphasis on Interior Decorating. She took courses at Foothill Collage after graduating and studied advertising and design. Using her collage backgrounds to combining both Interior Decorating, color palette, advertising and her fine art skills, Mariani has developed a uniquely recognizable language within her abstract works. Using rag paper collage, paint, and photo montage to create her works on canvas, Mariani’s subject matter often references her past experiences of her family life on the farm, from abstracted vegetables and farm animals to the classic front porch and clotheslines.
Featuring 13 works of art by Shirley Mariani (b. 1941), ‘Feels like Home’ showcases a series of paintings that reflect Mariani’s early life in Atlanta, Georgia and the family farm in Hillsboro, Illinois. Through her abstract, mixed medium works, Mariani visually narrates the stories of her life on the farm with her family.
Please join us for Shirley Mariani’s first solo exhibition. ‘Feels like Home’ is presented by Curated State at Avenue.
Curated State Statement
The Curated State-Avenue partnership provides exhibiting opportunities for artists who are outside the traditional gallery system. These artists have diverse backgrounds and bring a wide variety of skills, creativity and perspectives to their shows. We’ve especially enjoyed working with artists who are seeking chances to show their art later in life, whether they’ve been working for decades or have come to their art as a second career.
Courtney Norris
Director/Curator
Curated State
www.curatedstate.com
