Stephanie Dotson: Spool
Opening Reception: July 7th, 6-9PM On View: July 7th – August 4th, 2006 Stephanie Dotson’s installations are elaborate, graphic whirlwinds that render the flat into the physical, creating pictorial dioramas that burst, build and drip off the wall. With a back ground in printmaking and 2D design, Dotson’s sensibilities are evident, but with a mad arsenal of working materials and textures, layered images and planar structures, Dotson reworks and recreates space, challenging assumptions about design, printmaking, drawing, painting and installation. Spool colludes graphic work and decorative craft by utilizing drawings, painting and prints of macramé knots, decorative swirls, wood grain and bricks in a reconciliation of the tactile with the imagist, the grandiose with the delicate, and the dynamic with the ornamental. By further integrating personal imagery, Dotson exposes the decorative as a passive language, employing it as a “blank” canvas whereupon her more dynamic network of images can develop their own patois. Dotson’s Spool is an extension of a series of ongoing modular installations created during her current summer residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha NE. Stephanie Dotson received her MFA in Printmaking from the University of Georgia in 2005 and is Visiting Professor at Indiana University. She has had numerous solo shows throughout the United States including Wolves Eat Dogs at Fuller Projects Gallery. Bloomington, IN, AGA Introductions at The Marcia Wood Gallery in Athens, GA and an upcoming exhibition in 2007 at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Grand Rapids, MI. 
