Patricia Buck — Biography

This current exhibition of New Work at EDGE Gallery represents a return to my roots in color abstraction. A resident of Washington, DC for twenty years, I moved to Denver in August 1996. Pirate Artist Cooperative Gallery juried my work in as an associate member that same month. Howard University in Washington, DC, awarded a Master of Fine Art degree in Experimental Studio to me in 1996. After receiving that degree I moved to Denver. My work immediately changed substantially, from a formal color-based iconographic painting style to photo-based work in a monochromatic palette restricted to black and white. In this mode, I created three solo exhibitions over the next three years. In 1998, American Girl War, an autobiographical series of photographs from the family album exhibited at EDGE Gallery in the Emerging Forms Invitational Exhibition. These large images were enlarged 800% and large format printed on cotton vellum and clear acetate. In 1997, I exhibited Genetics/Memetics, a room installation of thirty-six vellum panels each measuring thirteen feet high by three feet wide covered 800 square feet in the Pirate Associates Gallery. A seven-foot tall steel and rubber cage contained a vintage microscope with slides displaying microscopic text exploring the new science of memetics and genetic engineering. (Documentation in bio book.) In my first exhibition in Denver at Pirate, in 1996, I exhibited BIG WOMEN. This series of over-sized black and white paintings of women’s body parts and heads and small 13" square paintings of men’s eyes addressed the concept of the "male gaze", and included transparent iridescent text on the large paintings.

In 1997, I received a Colorado Fellowship in Photography artist in residence grant at Anderson Ranch in Snowmass, Colorado. In earlier years, I received artist residency fellowships in ceramics (1995) and, painting and drawing (1994) at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine. In 1991 I was artist in residence in painting at Vermont Studio Center.

Since 1991, I have received eleven fellowships and grants. These include a grant-in-aid from the Rauschenberg Foundation, three graduate fellowships from Howard University (1993-96); a graduate assistantship at Howard (1995-96); and five grants from the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities, two of which were individual grants-in-aid for Painting/Visual Arts (1993, 1996).

In 1991 I was nominated as a finalist in the Washington, DC in the Mayor’s Art Awards for "Outstanding Emerging Artist". That same year, Art In America Washington critic and independent curator David Tannous included me in the panel discussion, "Artists Talk about Art" at Maryland Hall for the Arts in Annapolis, MD. During my graduate studies, I was awarded first prize in graduate ceramics 1995 and then in 1996 for Ritual Vessel and Sacred Manuscript. I also received first prize in Experimental Studio (1996) for the multi-media tableau Matricist Passages.

I have collaborated on four large-scale installations since 1981.

These have exhibited at the Washington Women’s Art’s Center, (HERS, 1981); the Washington Project for the Arts, Mondo Futuro "World’s Fair Event", (Tharsis Station, Mars, 2098 in 1991); the Arlington Arts Center, (HERS: Inside/Outside, 1993); and the University of Maryland, (HERS: Inside/Outside, 1994). A discussion of the collaborative installation, "HERS: Inside/Outside", was aired Channel 26/WETA’s arts program, "Around Town", in a round table discussion with Robert Aubrey Davis, artist Bill Dunlop and artist philanthropist, Peggy Cooper-Cafritz. In 1994, the collaboration "HERS" was selected by the Washington based PANDORA: Women in the Arts & Letters, as their premier exhibition and was installed at the University of Maryland. "HERS", included a 50-minute audio loop with women ages 15-75 articulating their life experiences, aired in a physical space comprised of sacred temple for women, with a functional full-size throne, a painted floor canvas and a participatory journal for recording responses to the work.

In 1992 a monotype of my work was featured on the cover of the World Bank report, International Women’s Month and distributed worldwide. The tableau Matricist Passages was shown in Calumet, Michigan at "Spirits Dancing", a Women’s Caucus for art exhibition, and paintings have exhibited at the World Bank building in Washington, DC. My work has exhibited in New York in the Women’s Caucus for Art exhibition "At the Crosshairs", where I also presented a performance "Sonoluminescense", accompanied by an original collaborative soundtrack. Work has exhibited at Alla Rogers Gallery in Washington, DC, at Washington Project for the Arts, the District of Columbia Arts Center, Gallery 10, Gallery K and Touchstone Gallery. In 1981, my painting, Demons without Faces was purchased by Joseph Hirshhorn and subsequently bequeathed to the Smithsonian Institutions Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. NY work is included in numerous private collections in France, Germany, and twelve states, as well as the public art collection of the state of Colorado and the law firm of Shea and Gardner in Washington, DC.