Paintings, ceramics pair for Miller Gallery show
Two Mississippi-based artists, Laura Greer Holladay and Byron Myrick, will share Meridian Community College’s Miller Art Gallery space with their encaustic paintings and ceramics, respectively, for the Feb. 24-March 31 exhibition.
A reception is planned for Thursday, Feb. 24, from 4-5:30 p.m. Campus and community residents are welcomed to attend. Admission is free of charge.
Holladay, a native of Meridian, creates encaustic paintings where a mixture of beeswax,
tree resin, color pigments, and heat are used. She explained that the ancient medium
is currently experiencing a resurgence in popularity.
“Many of my paintings have an ethereal, dream-like quality about them. I paint mostly from my own dreams or from memories of places I have been. In my studio, I often paint what I refer to as atmospheric paintings,” Holladay said.
Her passion for art and nature reaches deep. “I remember as a child, lying in the grass and staring up at the clouds, feeling the wind and trying to make objects form the cloud shapes floating by. I believe this is when my passion to create art first began,” she said. At 12, she started painting oils and later studied art and design at the University of Alabama, majoring in interior design.
“I have used traditional methods in my encaustic paintings, but I have also explored modern techniques as well. I’ve done some photo encaustic work where I fuse layers of wax and pigment over my original photographs. I have also created some photo transfer paintings. This happens when I fuse a photocopy of an image into the wax, adding color as I go,” Holladay explained.
Myrick’s ceramics are from a series he named “Quilted.” “The series is influenced
from two directions. The first is a fascination with reconstructive archaeological
findings of vessels seen in museums. The second is the quilt, a part of the Southern
heritage constructed from many parts to a whole, as functional as well as a decorative
object,” he said.
Myrick spends most of his time working and creating in his Moselle studio. He noted his ceramic pieces are thrown on the potter’s wheel and by hand. They are later bisque fired and carefully broken.
“I never know exactly how this is going to turn out. Then I lay out the shards and assign color, pattern, texture and marks to each piece. The shards are then glazed and fired using Raku or post-firing reduction. This technique further enhances the surface and colors of the shards. The piece is then put back together using a strong epoxy. The results are vessels that are unique in appearance,” he said.
The Miller Art Gallery is open Monday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.