Chrysalises | Elysia Mann, Raymond Padrón & Joshua Shorey

September 25, 2019 – January 11, 2020 | Jerry Drown Wood Studio Gallery

Flat Earth, 2016 Etching, chine collé and drawing on paper and fabric 60×35″

Elysia Mann is a visual artist and works at Loghaven Artist Residency in Knoxville. She grew up on rural Nebraska, studied printmaking at Washington University in St. Louis, and received her MFA at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is The Focus editor for LocateArts and the Art & Design Editor for the literary journal Grist. In her Knoxville studio, Elysia reflects on contemporary issues of binocular thought and ecological detachment. Her interdisciplinary approach blurs the edges of print, textile, drawing and poetry.

“I am blind in my right eye. It’s a minor disability that affects how I see, but also fundamentally how I understand. I flatten space and embrace tactility. Fantasizing about stereoscopy, I tend to look twice. My work is spurred by a biological curiosity – a theory that language and vision, our human tools for interpreting the world, can be more interesting when they malfunction.” – Mann

Leather Jacket, 2019, Charred and stained yellow pine, 60x32x3″

Raymond Padrón is a sculptor and performance based artist working in diverse processes and materials. Born in 1983, he grew up in the Northern Virginia suburbs of DC. in 2005 after receiving his BA in sculpture and graphic design from Messiah College in Grantham, PA, he moved south to Chattanooga, TN. In 2011 he received his MFA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has since returned to Chattanooga where he makes art, exhibits nationally and teaches.

“I describe my studio practice as an epistemology through craft, using traditional crafting techniques and materials as a platform for the improvisational act. It is the relationship I see between improvisation and tradition that interests me, in how both work together to help us form our identities.” – Padrón

A Whole Steadiness, 2017, steel, table salt, 8x4x8′

Joshua Shorey makes art about time, material, consciousness and meaning. He received his MFA in Sculpture from the University of Tennessee in 2017. He currently runs BAPO Design, a sculpture and furniture studio in Knoxville, TN.

“A Whole Steadiness is a kinetic sculpture based on the topography of Mt Katahdin in Maine, USA that slowly builds a miniature mountainscape by the accumulation of grains of salt. It is meant to demonstrate the quiet and persistent inevitability of geologic time.” – Shorey