Roby King Galleries is exhibiting works by two very different island artists this month: Gary Groves and Aaron McKnight.
“It’s a unique show [with] one artist working with plant materials to make his art and the other making plant materials the subject of his art” said Andrea Roby-King. “Both have been contributing artists to Bainbridge Island Museum of Art.”
The show titled “Nature’s Realm” to encapsulate both artist’s love of the natural world and the inspiration they find there.
A printmaker, Groves’ woodcut prints are based on flexible and fluid forms in nature such as grapevines, grasses and tangled shapes of organic debris.
“In my craft of woodcut, I carve very fine detailed parts to create tonal variations in my images,” Groves said. “I try to emphasize the abstract aspects and seek out the uniqueness of each subject I am attracted to — not asking too many questions I just follow my gut.
“I try to find a quality often not readily identifiable and see if I can enhance it. Many of my blocks can take as much as a week or more to carve, depending on the degree of detail.”
Groves was a contributing artist to the Twelve Years in the Woods exhibition at BIMA.
A sculptor, McKnight’s creates a unique art form entirely from nature itself. Making poetic connections between natural materials and inner human experience — a decayed leaf with change, layered sheets of bark with growth — his work focuses on the art object as a way of bringing the seen and unseen into interpretive conversation.
“My sculptures are meditations on presence and change,” McKnight said. “Working directly with leaves, ash and bark from fallen leaves, I construct forms inspired by the flux of nature’s processes.
“Identification with the natural world through the faculty of attention is a focus of my studio practice. I’m drawn to work in methodical, repetitive processes analogous to growth in nature, layering paper-thin materials until they achieve sculptural form.”
McKnight was a contributing artist to the Thought Patterns exhibition at BIMA.
Roby King Galleries is located at 176 Winslow Way East. Call 206-842-2063 for visit www.robykinggallery.com for more information.
