FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

LIGHTLY HERE: DRAWINGS AND PRINTS AND WORKS ON PAPER BY TANJA SOFTIC AND HOLLY MORRISON OPENS AT THE PAGE BOND GALLERY NOVEMBER 7, 2008

The Page Bond Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of drawings and prints by Tanja Softic and, works on paper by Holly Morrison. Tanja Softic’s work addresses the factors of cultural hybridity that shape the identity and world view of an immigrant: exile, longing, translation, and memory. Her contrapuntal, layered compositions function as visual signifiers of displaced existence. Holly Morrison utilizes camera and lens as a means of heightening awareness of the recognized world. She explores the territory of perception and metaphysics—using drawing as a means of seeking the invisible and making it seen. These works by Tanja Softic and Holly Morrison will be on view at the Page Bond Gallery, 1625 West Main Street, with an opening reception honoring the artists, Friday, November 7, 2008 from 7 to 9 PM. The exhibition will be on view at the gallery from Wednesday November 5 through Tuesday December 8.

Tanja Softic’s intricately layered composite images of events or objects reflect the fragmented nature of both memory and contemporary living within an imaginary architectural construct. She explores the territories between the intellect and senses, places where artistic, literary and scientific methods of inquiry interface: botany, architecture, contemporary and historical medical imaging. The precision and order of scientific illustration and renderings of plants are metaphors for ways of engagement with the world.

Softic earned a B.F.A. in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina and an M.F.A. in printmaking at Old Dominion University. She is a recipient of the 1996 National Endowment for the Arts/ Southern Arts Federation Visual Artist Fellowship, and Soros Foundation – Open Society Institute Exhibition Support Grant in 1997. Her work is included in numerous collections in the United States and abroad, among them the New York Public Library, Library of Congress, Print Department and New South Wales Gallery of Art in Sydney, Australia. Softic is the Associate Professor of Art at the University of Richmond.

The foundation of Morrison’s work is rooted in her love of the printed image and etching in particular with, “a high regard for the rich tactile quality of a beautifully pulled impression, its velvet black ink pressed into sheets of absorbent paper.” Her method extended in the early nineties to her use of the camera, “to capture a fleeting image of the world.” Her work now combines the use of photogravure and etching—juxtaposing the immediate with the measured.

Holly Morrison received her B.F.A. for Painting and Printmaking at the Kansas City Art Institute and her M.F.A. in Printmaking at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI. Morrison is the 2006-2007 recipient of the Virginia Commission for the Arts Artist Fellowship and the 2003 recipient of the Ohio Arts Council Individual Artists Grant. Her work has been shown in numerous national group and solo exhibitions and belongs to many private and public collections. Among them are the collections of, Ball State University Museum of Art, Muncie, IN, Capital One Financial Corporation, Richmond, VA, Cranbrook Academy of Art Museum, Bloomsfield Hills, MI, and Southern Graphics Council Archive, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS.