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Reimagining the Real:
Ana M. Lopez & Natalie Macellaio

APRIL 23 – JULY 9, 2023

Keeler Gallery

image: Ana M. Lopez, Night Air Garniture, 2020. Stainless steel, vitreous enamel, silver foil. Courtesy of the Artist.

Artists Ana M. Lopez and Natalie Macellaio utilize the visual language of the everyday—air conditioning fixtures, fences, road signs, and construction debris—to create unique works of art that are both familiar and fantastical in order to make profound statements about power, privilege, and the environment.

Lopez’s work takes the ubiquitous forms of artificial air handling that populate many rooftops and walls and transforms them into garnitures. Lopez’s rooftop forms-turned-granitures invite viewers to reflect upon the West’s atmospheric colonization of the global climate. Macellaio focuses on the construction and deconstruction of the environment at the hands of mankind. Like the signs at a construction site, Macellaio’s pieces ask viewers to stop and consider the patterns and debris of modern development.

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Ana M. Lopez is a metalsmith, educator and decorative arts scholar. Her creative work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Recently, Lopez has had solo exhibitions at the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum (Mesa, AZ), Fort Worth Arts (Fort Worth, TX), and the Appalachian Center for Craft (Smithville, TN). She was selected for a 2019 Maker-Creator Fellowship at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library (Winterthur, DE). Ana has lectured extensively on her own work as a presenter at the Society of North American Goldsmiths conference, the College Art Association Conference and Texas Metals Symposium. She holds an MFA in Metalsmithing from the Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI) and an MA in the History of American Decorative Arts from The Smithsonian Associates (Washington, DC) and Parsons School of Design (New York, NY). She is currently Associate Professor of Metalsmithing & Jewelry at the University of North Texas (Denton, TX) and lives with her family in Fort Worth, Texas.

Ana M. Lopez

Natalie Macellaio

Headshots courtesy of the artists.

Natalie Macellaio grew up in the Chicago area and moved to Texas to receive her MFA in Jewelry and Metalsmithing from the University of North Texas (Denton, TX). She is the Professor of Art at Dallas College (Dallas, TX). Her work has been featured in galleries across the country. She is the co-creator of The Mother Load, an international project featuring over 100 artists from 8 different countries. The Mother Load was shown at the Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, TX) in 2014 and the Hannah MacLure Centre (Dundee, Scotland) in 2016. Macellaio has also co-curated a traveling exhibition of contemporary works by Texas jewelers and metalsmiths hosted at Dallas College, San Jacinto College (Pasadena, TX), University of Texas (El Paso, TX), and at the Texas Metal Symposium at Texas Tech University (Lubbock, TX). Natalie currently resides in Plano, TX with her husband and twins.

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ONGOING EXHIBITION & PROGRAMMING SUPPORT

Windgate Charitable Foundation

Hyde Family Foundations

ONGOING OPERATIONAL SUPPORT

ArtsMemphis

Tennessee Arts Commission

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