The Student News Site of Central Oregon Community College

The Broadside

The Student News Site of Central Oregon Community College

The Broadside

The Student News Site of Central Oregon Community College

The Broadside

Deviations and Iterations: Artist Mandee Schroer’s exhibition at Pence Gallery

Deviations+and+Iterations%3A+Artist+Mandee+Schroers+exhibition+at+Pence+Gallery

The four kinds of pieces displayed in Amanda Schroer’s art exhibition all involved a labor-intensive process that resulted in thought out and unique creations. Schroer displayed four kinds of mediums and platforms: water color on paper, monoprints, collagraphs and flashe on wood panels.

Central Oregon Community College’s art exhibition at Pence Pickney Gallery presented her art show “Deviations and Iterations” on April 6 at 4:30.

Most of the work displayed had been created within the last year, but there was one piece that she based the theme of the rest of her pieces on: a large water-color piece titled Squirm (see below).

Mandee Schroer, the artist behind the “Deviations and Iterations” exhibition with the piece that inspired the rest of the pieces that she displayed. Titled Squirm, the large watercolor piece used 13 different shades of black. Squirm is meant to express her “mental unrest and discomfort”.
Mandee Schroer, the artist behind the “Deviations and Iterations” exhibition with the piece that inspired the rest of the pieces that she displayed. Titled Squirm, the large watercolor piece used 13 different shades of black. Squirm is meant to express her “mental unrest and discomfort”.

“That is sort of the impetus of the show [Squirm], it’s where I wanted to continue this body of work. All of [the pieces displayed] are new  and I wanted to make pieces that sort of reference that language, that visual language,” Schroer explained.

Schroer mentioned that the piece is a good way to describe her energy in her daily life. In that piece and the pieces she based off of it, she was trying to “create a vocabulary that doesn’t have a verbal language” with prominence of the use of lines.

The watercolor pieces displayed were intertwined blocks of ribbons made through a process of spray foam, photographing, photoshop, printing, tracing, and painting to get the final result of balance and composition, which was Schroer’s main emphasis.

The 16 square wood flashe pieces were a “successful experiment” for Schroer; this was the first time she has displayed her work using flashe as her medium.

She mentioned that those pieces were especially laborious due to the fact that the medium was new. The lines and shapes that she painted onto the wood are “forms that do not have any representation.” Schroer went on to point out that “[there is] such concentration in a simple act of one brush stroke.”

The new medium she used in this exhibition is something she says that she will continue to work on as she “[felt] it’s the beginning of something” with her art.

Schroer stressed that the work she’s displaying this month was all part of a learning process of developing a visual language, confidence in her art, and how to have intuition and trust your work as well as your techniques.

Bill Hoppe, instructor and gallery director at COCC, met Schroer at the Caldera Artist Residency Program in 2015. The program is an art and social justice camp for Portland and Central Oregon Students. There are eight to ten artists, poets, musicians, etc. that attend this program every year and they host an open house of their work at the end of each month.

Schroer teaches at Portland State University, Clackamas Community College, and Mt. Hood Community College. “Right now I’m adjunct professor,” Schroer said.

Schroer teaches several classes at each of the schools, “I teach anywhere from intro into drawing to advanced drawing with mixed media. I also teach printmaking, which I’m leading a class at PSU in Mexico this summer for that class in Guanajuato. This is my third time doing this. I also teach painting and drawing.”

 

Deviation photo
The four monoprints displayed, all titled Untitled. Schroer made all four the week after she taught her printmaking class in Guanajuato, Mexico for PSU.

 

All while managing putting together an entire art show, Schroer still manages to balance teaching at three different schools. “This term I’m extremely busy,” she said. “I had to take off two days off of class (for her exhibition), it’s what you have to do as an artist. I think that the schools that I teach at and most universities support their artists. The thing that they should be doing first and foremost is thinking about art, so they are fully accepting of this.”

Schroer has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drawing and painting that she received in 1999 from the University of New Mexico. Five years after receiving her BFA, she went back to school to get her master’s in interdisciplinary studies.

“Even though I was still very passionate about art, teaching helps me keep the practice up, challenges me to learn new processes, concepts, and learn more about contemporary art,” she said.

All of the pieces displayed are non-objective. They aren’t representational of real objects, they express a unique language that Schroer created through the use of lines.

Her work will be displayed April 6-28, Monday-Friday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Noon to 5 p.m. on the last Saturday of the month.

 

By Katya Agatucci | The Broadside

Contact: [email protected]

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