Karen May

The Arts Center at Duck Creek is pleased to present upcoming solo exhibition featuring artist Karen May, opening Saturday, June 8, and on view through Sunday, July 7, 2024.

A reception will be held on Saturday, June 8, from 5-7 pm.

”Karen May has created at NIAD Art Center since 2011. Her early work focused on and presented her memories of growing up California’s Central Valley. For the last year, May has intermittently been working on top of old maps with graphite and ink, using marks and washes to enhance the essential parts of these guides, the grids. The pumped compositions and colors of the maps soon become a sort of abstract expressionist codex.

Recently, May began leafing through the studio’s copies of Artforum. She soon started drawing on top of certain adverts and images, but unlike the maps, May’s markers often do not pronounce or exaggerate what is already there, instead they seem to allude to tattooing, grafting a second or new skin onto her found images and text.” – Antenne Books, 2016

This exhibition at Duck Creek, alongside an online exhibit on the NIAD website, will feature a selection of May’s extensive Artforum drawings, which were reproduced in a catalog printed by Antenne Books in 2016.