Melange: Marie Craig + Mary Marley

“Melange,” features the work of Marie Craig and Mary Marley. The artists employ abstraction, bold color, and novel combinations of artistic media, with each resulting piece a vibrant mix. Craig, working in cyanotype and ink, interprets both the natural and built worlds. Marley, in combining acrylic paint and cut paper, creates environs rich with pattern and texture. Taken together, “Melange” presents a show of hybrids in many varieties and a wholly inviting collection of new and experimental work.

Marie Craig uses alternative process photography to explore the overlap between concrete bodies, or still moments, and the life instilled in them. Working primarily with cyanotype, an early lens-less photographic process, she combines digital negatives and plant material to create images that she then embellishes using line and color. Riffing on the classic method of hand-coloring photos, Craig uses bold color blocking to respond to the indigo of cyanotype and to call attention to the spaces in and around the forms.

Mary Marley’s newest mixed media collage series, “Three Times as Much,” combines acrylic paint and cut paper. Marley works on many pieces at once, and her images are built with no fixed notion of a finished product. She begins with loose gestural shapes and large blocks of color, creating her own game of sorts by walking the border of play and disciplined composition.