Of race and robots
The summer season is coming to local galleries around town. The Mark Woolley Gallery offers two shows in June, featuring a mixed-media ceramic collection by Tim Diggles, and Angelina Woolley’s collection of oil paintings that focus on mixed-race issues.
Both local artists can be seen at the Woolley Gallery, 120 N.W. Ninth Suite 210, through the end of June.
Diggles’ collection, entitled “The Borg Botanical,” is a mix of ceramic pieces and sculpture. His work, described as unusual, has featured huge pieces of sculpture and a tribute to his great Dane in the past.
This collection is described by the artist as part plant, part earth and part hard-edge industrial abstract sculpture. He states, “The Borg Botanical totems and wall reliefs are the natural evolution of my recent work combining manufactured junk parts with hand-built clay structures.”
His inspiration was a collection of branches from a Russian Olive tree, which grew in the yard of a rented house in Logan, Utah.
In his artist statement Diggles states, “I decided to combine the thorn branches with my fascination for science fiction. Each module, pod or host structure seemed to function in what could be a nutrition or reproductive system. Thus the name, Borg (as in cyborg) Botanicals.”
The second collection featured in June is a series of paintings by local artist Angelina Woolley. These paintings incorporate wood constructions, transparent glazes and photographic elements.
Woolley, who recently has been searching for her own ancestral past, states in a press release, “I realized chances were good that I had African ancestry. I discovered through a cousin that my grandmother had indeed talked about this, but I had not heard anything about this while I was growing up. I hope that the visual images in these paintings will invite dialogue, on that I believe is crucial in understanding race relations in this country.”
Woolley has created murals for the Oregon State Park System and has been seen in several group and solo shows.
Information is available by calling (503) 224-5475 or on the Web at markwoolley.com
