The Gadsden Museum of Art will be hosting an opening reception and artists’ panel discussion titled “Expanded Practice” from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 7, 2023. The panel will be conducted by UAB professor Doug Baulos and will feature artist Sara Garden Armstrong, who is currently on exhibit at the museum, UAB professor Stacey Holloway, and artist Daisie Hostima.
The discussion will explore the current challenges of a working artist along with adapting the skills to use multiple practices to create a body of work. It will begin at 3:20 p.m. and will last approximately one hour.
Two exhibits will have their opening receptions. Virginia artists Lou Haney and Sharon Shapiro bring their show Americana-Rama to the Barbara Reed Gallery, located on the second floor of the museum. Americana-Rama is composed of oil, watercolor, and acrylic paintings. Lou Haney uses nostalgia of domestic scenery that that plays with the viewer’s memory to create a weird line between fantasy and reality.
Inspired by the Pattern and Decoration Movement of the mid-1970s and ‘80s, Haney’s works incorporate floral imagery, pattern and decoration, blurring the line between art and design. Sharon Shapiro’s works examine the past (her own and the collective) alongside the current racial and climate crisis. 
Inspired by personal history, collective myths and pop culture, she chronicles the complexities of growing up in the American South. Staged photographs provide a basis for her paintings meant to be more of a collage than a singular point of view. Shapiro emphasizes the figures’ camaraderie, vulnerability, and independence by creating semi-imaginary environments for women in utopian and dystopian settings.
Originally from Portland, Oregon, now-Huntsville-based artist Aaryn Lee works in drawing/mark making, mixed-media and printmaking, installation, projection, time-based media, and performance. Her work tends to be heavily layered, repetitive in nature, somber in mood, and touched with the muted overcast tones from her hometown.
Themes investigated in her work relate to memory, ritual, body dysmorphia, the female body, and meditation. Aaryn Lee’s show entitled Somatic Conversation Marks & Memories will be on display on the first floor of the museum in the Leo Reynolds Gallery.
The artist receptions immediately follow discussion. Light refreshments will be served.
