Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present Inner Worlds / Outer Worlds featuring paintings by Ann Marie Auricchio and sculptures by Sherry Owens.
 

Through Ann Marie Auricchio’s work she explores perceptions of place and experience as well as the complexities of emotional and cognitive associations we make with our world. Her paintings materialize from the convergence of frenetic energy, environment/landscape, light/shadow, anxiety, meditation, history, memory, and a pure visceral response to both these physical and psychological places.
 

In Auricchio’s new body of work entitled Collision with the Unconscious: A Journey of Transformation, she uses the epic narrative of cycles and journeys to further her explorations of what it feels like and to process the experience of being human; the cataclysmic events that shift us abruptly, the descent into uncomfortable and unknown spaces, and the emergence from the dark shadows to find new hope. Throughout Auricchio’s metaphorical series of paintings she references the three levels of consciousness as well as the three elements of Earth, Fire, and Water to represent the conscious world, desire, and the subconscious respectively.
 

For over 30 years, sculptor Sherry Owens has used the sinewy crepe myrtle tree to tell her story of the Texas landscape, death, renewal, beauty, and of today’s growing environmental concerns. Remnants of personal stories, visions and observations in nature are the driving forces in her work. She believes that what we see and do in our daily lives leaves a mark on our planet. It is the direct impact of human activities on the natural world, which is visualized in her artistic practice. She creates connections with nature using crepe myrtle trees found along the side of the road. Each stick is hand-carved and cut to fit, then laid in place and secured with a small myrtle peg. What takes precedence in the laborious process is the importance of detail and evidence of the artist’s hand and her interaction with the materials.
 

Several of Owens’ works in Inner Worlds / Outer Worlds include a human element such as her own hands or elbows cast in bronze. The cast bronze parts might be loosely considered as putting the artist into her work. In recent years she has carved large yokes or forks from the trees into what she calls “elbows,” so it was a natural extension for her to add her own elbows cast in bronze, to her sculpture, Grandfather’s Land.
 

Ann Marie Auricchio is a native New Yorker, currently living and working in New Orleans, LA. She received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and is represented by Octavia Gallery in New Orleans and EDNA Contemporary in San Luis Obispo, CA. Her work has been exhibited at The Alexandria Museum, LA; White Columns Gallery, NY; The Painting Center, NY, among others. She has most recently been a recipient of a Joan Mitchell Center artist residency, during fall/winter 2021-22.
 

Sherry Owens is a native Texan, currently living and working in Dallas, TX. She received a BFA from Southern Methodist University. Recent Texas solo exhibitions include The Grace Museum; Cris Worley Fine Arts; Martin Museum of Art; Art Museum of Southeast Texas; and a two-person site-specific installation at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum. She was also included in recent exhibitions at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, TX and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, LA. She has exhibited internationally in Austria, Denmark, Germany, Greece, India, Japan, Peru, and Turkey. Her work is currently on view in the Ground Zero 360 Remembrance Exhibition at the Museum of Biblical Art, TX. She has completed several large-scale public art projects in Texas at the Love Field Airport; Ben E Keith Company; True North Heights Boulevard Sculpture Exhibition; and at Oakbrook Greenspace, included in Insta11ations, through the Art League Houston and the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs. Owens has received the following awards and recognition: Moss/Chumley North Texas Artist Award (1999), West TX Triangle artist (2010), and the Artist/Craftsman Award from the AIA Dallas (2014).