Douglas Degges and Noelle Smith at Material

For immediate release:

February 17, 2009

Contact: Hamlett Dobbins, 901.219.1943, hamlettdobbins@hotmail.com.

Material is excited to announce its forty-second exhibition: Douglas Degges and Noelle Smith: Walk Slowly.

Douglas Degges and Noelle Smith: Walk Slowly will run for one night only with a reception for the artists on Friday, February 20th from 6-8 pm.

Douglas Degges is currently pursuing his B.A. in studio arts at Rhodes College. His work was featured in the group exhibition Entertainment Value at Odessa last fall. Degges’ studio practice is intensely interested in how we, as human beings, take from and negotiate different ways of seeing our world. For the artist, abstraction is the most adequate and appropriate for this; it provides the detachment and freedom needed for exploration and experimentation.

Noelle Smith is also pursuing her B.A. in studio arts at Rhodes College. Her work describes the process of experiencing daily life as a series of stimuli followed by a personal, internal dialogue only to be followed by yet more stimuli. Her pieces vary in pace and materials, which work together to create a language to describe a particular mood, situation, or event. While Smith’s individual pieces have specific references and can stand alone, when viewed together the work functions as an archive, with reoccurring visual languages such as color palette, particular found materials, and figurative characters that link everything back to a source.

Material is located at 2553 Broad Avenue. Parking is available on both the north and south sides of Broad Avenue.

Jpg information: “degges.jpg” is Douglas Degges’ Untitled, Acrylic on panel, 17x14”, 2008. “nsmith.jpg” is Noelle Smith’s Untitled, Mixed media on paper, 2x2”, 2009.