Carrie McGee’s mixed media constructions explore emotional tone within repeated form. Utilizing transparent plastics as a ground, she experiments with natural and chemical processes, such as rust and oxidation, to create luminous works that emanate a meditative pulse. Rooted in painting and experimentation, McGee’s work has evolved from ephemeral to lasting and architectural in scope.
Current works emphasize floated presentations in which the interplay of light, shadow, and reflection participate in the nature of each object. The influence of seasonal change, along with the time lag process of creating, comingles to form a heightened sense of the present moment within each object.
McGee has lived in many parts of the United States, having migrated from Cincinnati to Los Angeles, New York, and finally Nashville. Her work has been the subject of one-woman exhibitions in Nashville, Boston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., and New York, and can be found in numerous public and private collections, including the Tennessee State Museum and the Christoph Merian Foundation in Basel, Switzerland.
Artist Statement:
When I relocated to the south in the early 1990s I found myself working in a region then removed from the trends and pressures of an art center. It felt like an absence of context, and in that open terrain I finally found the work I wanted to pursue.
Much has changed in Nashville since then. When I arrived there were quite a few abandoned factories and warehouses still standing, great old buildings and yards containing rusty machine parts, farm implements, and downright mysterious things. On weekends I would explore and scavenge in those places, now gone, and in them I came upon objects essential to the work I have since developed.
The overtaking character of the southern landscape is a constant. Giving way to it, carving order out of it – nature here holds sway and is ever present in my creative process.
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