Recent Favorites

 

Dusk, 2022, chalk pastel on paper, 15x15"

Dawn, 2022, chalk pastel on paper, 15x15"

A couple of recent pieces commissioned by dear friends. These were such fun to make. 

Empty Vessels at Pilsen Arts and Community House

 

It was an absolute pleasure to show some of my current pastels and oils at Pilsen Arts and Community House this past month. Thanks to Teresa Magaña and the whole PACH crew for putting together a beautiful exhibition and reception! You can view and purchase the remaining available work from the exhibition here. 

DRAWN at Manifest Gallery

 

I'm delighted to have this piece included in this year's DRAWN exhibition at Manifest Gallery! This is one of my favorite pastels from my current series - also the largest - and it's an honor to be able to show it alongside some of my favorite contemporary artists. 

My dear friend and studio mate Katherine Colborn has a gorgeous painting in the PORTALS exhibition, running concurrently with DRAWN. It's a rare treat to get to show with your friends, and I'm grateful and humbled to get to share space with her. 

The shows run through May 13th! If you're in the area, please stop by. There's a lot of good work up on the walls, and we are in excellent company. 

Studio, April

 

a rare glimpse at one of my current works-in-progress

palette, divided into warms and cools (sort of)

Holding Space, 2022, chalk pastel on paper, 15x15" 

This object (the same one as in the in-progress piece above) arrived in a box full of cardboard treasures from my painter friend Geoff Barnes. He visited my studio back in December, and I gave him a piece of molded cardboard he admired to paint. Which he then did, exquisitely, twice - and you can see those paintings on his website here and here. I love the way he saw that beautifully weird little toner cartridge endcap. 

This cardboard piece captivated me immediately - the way it catches the light, and all the color that gets reflected into those beautiful browns... endlessly fascinating. I'm looking forward to working my way through that box of treasures, one piece of "trash" at a time. 

Immaterial Things - installation photos

Hi friends. Happy Sunday. My solo show IMMATERIAL THINGS closed last month at the Farmer Family Gallery at the OSU Lima campus - thanks to everyone who stopped by! Here are some installation photos, along with close-ups of a few of my favorites from this group. 

Valance, oil on paper on panel, 14x14" 

Compression, oil on paper on panel, 14x14" (private collection) 

Ozymandias, chalk pastel on paper, 15x15" 

Clear, oil on paper on panel, 14x14" 

All my thanks to Ed Valentine for inviting me to share work in this beautiful space. On a personal note, I remember the first time I saw Ed's paintings at Linda Warren Gallery. I was an undergrad student at SAIC at the time, trying to find my way as a painter in a conceptual program. I stood in front of his work and was awestruck by a room full of PAINTING - actual, contemporary painting that delighted and reveled in surface and image as much as content and meaning. The memory of those portraits kept me going through some pretty brutal critiques, and they've always been a reminder for me of what painting can be and do, today. So, it's especially meaningful to have the opportunity to connect with Ed now, and to be able to share my paintings with him and his students. This is an experience and a memory that I will forever treasure. 

13th Annual Drawing Discourse

 

Color Spots, 2021, chalk pastel on paper, 15x15"

installation photos courtesy of Tamie Beldue

I'm absolutely delighted to share that my piece, "Color Spots" received a Juror's Choice Award from Catherine Murphy in this year's Drawing Discourse Exhibition. 

Catherine Murphy has long been an artistic hero of mine; I deeply admire her particular vision and passion for perceptual work. It means more than I can say that she spent time looking at my drawing, let alone that she also thought it deserving of such a generous honor. 

Humbled. Honored. Still in shock, a little. There's a lot of good work in this show. If you're near Asheville, do yourself a favor and go see these pieces in person. The show runs through February 11th. 

The exhibition catalog will be available soon through Blurb. I'll post a link on my website as soon as I can.

Thanks for reading. Love you all. See you back here next month.

Upcoming Exhibitions

Happy new year, friends. I hope this finds you happy and healthy, wherever and whenever you're reading this. 

Studio-wise, 2021 was a productive and exciting year. After a year or two of casting a wide net and skimming the surface of various imagery and content, I took a deep dive into one particular facet of my research and started a new series of still lifes: single object portraits of various packing materials and containers. I started the series thinking about the word "containment" and its myriad applications... which seemed especially relevant during our shared experiences of lockdown and quarantine. The work grew from that into an exploration of void fill, fluff freight, and dunnage. Or, to put it another way, "the things we use to fill empty space."

Bubble wrap, air pockets, and other kinds of recycled paper are temporary objects by design. They are critically important while in transit - offering a kind of cushioning, protection, or armor to something precious - but once they reach their destination, they are almost always immediately discarded. How many times have you gotten a box in the mail, only to immediately rip off the tape and dig through the "filler" to find the prize inside? What do you do with all that filler once it's in a pile on your floor?

I'm thinking about the things we surround ourselves with, both the literal and the metaphorical. I'm thinking about the protective spells we cast, the magical thinking we employ, and the 6' air pockets we've been maintaining around ourselves and each other of late. And, always, I'm thinking about the duality of absence and presence, the inevitability of emptiness, and the volume of silence. 

And with that, we're back to our regularly scheduled monthly blog posts in the new year. That's my intention anyway, and I'll make every effort to stick to it.

Here's what's on tap this month. If you're in any of these areas, and have a chance to stop by the shows, please let me know! I'd love to hear from you. And if not, I'll be sure to share photos here as well as on instagram - follow along (at) samantha.haring. 

Immaterial Things 

solo show 

The Ohio State University, Lima, OH

January 20–February 17, 2022

13th Annual Drawing Discourse 

juried group show 

University of North Carolina, Asheville, NC 

January 14–February 11, 2022 

Juror: Catherine Murphy

Miniature Show 

group show 

Southside Gallery, Oxford MS 

January 9–February 19, 2022

Cheers,

Sam