Monica Angle, Heather Beardsley, Michelle Gagliano, Kris Iden: Organic Matter

Les Yeux du Monde is pleased to present Organic Matter, an exhibition of new work by Monica Angle, Heather Beardsley, Michelle Gagliano, and Kris Iden. Each of these artists contemplates the natural world from a distinct point of view in their work, often allying subject with medium through the use of natural materials.

Monica Angle’s artistic practice combines painting and printmaking techniques to evoke the feeling of particular natural locales or topographies. Grounded in Angle’s observations of the physical world, her interpretative landscapes also rely on personal memories and apoetic imagination to convey her experience of a place. Beginning with monoprint processes, the artist first applies watercolor paint to glass, which she transfers onto paper, fabric, or wood panels. Through the repetition of this process, color is built up and its component watery traces as it moves across the glass plate are captured, creating a visual map of its motion, pathways, and clearings that suggest alandscape. Angle received her undergraduate degree from Harvard, an M.S. in Geography from Pennsylvania State University, and did her graduate work in Printmaking and Bookmaking at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She has exhibited works extensively, including in solo exhibitions at the Burchfield Penney, SUNY Buffalo State, and the Fralin Museum of Art. Her artwork can be found in notable collections private and public, including that of the Burchfield Penney.

Heather Beardsley’s interdisciplinary practice bridges the realms of art and science. Playing with scientific display conventions, the artist imitates the style of high-tech visualizations such as spectrographs and 3D printing through low-tech craft media like modeling clay, cyanotypes, and embroidery. Beardsley’s artwork raises important questions about the impact of industrialization on the natural world and explores the concept of ruins and abandoned structures as agents of intergenerational communication. Per Beardsley, “Looking at my work, I want people to ask: Can the damage we’ve done be reversed? What will the world look like without us? And how long will evidence of our civilizations remain?” Heather Beardsley holds a B.A. in Studio Art from the University of Virginia and an M.F.A. in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has shown work nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at Science Gallery Dublin, Museo del Traje in Madrid, the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, and Museum Rijswijk in the Netherlands. She has a solo exhibition at the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia on view June 30 – October 29, 2023.

Michelle Gagliano’s abstract paintings give shape to the forces of nature through strong expressive movements. Underlying the powerful sense of the elemental in her work is her devotion to a wholly natural studio practice, where she has eliminated the use of all toxic materials. Instead, the artist employs only paint she creates from pigment and organic matter including eggs, vinegar, clove, walnut, and lavender oils, along with gold metal. Gagliano received her B.A. from Plymouth State University in New Hampshire and her M.F.A. from American University in Washington D.C.. She has exhibited extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Asia, and her work can be found in important public and private collections, including those of the Burchfield Penney, the Gordon Ramsey Corporation, and The Manes Hotel in Prague. Gagliano is currently preparing for a 2024 solo exhibition at the Casa Raffaello, a museum in Urbino, Italy that is the birthplace of Raphael, where she will exhibit contemporary works made with the same natural paint “recipes” that Raphael used in the Italian Renaissance.

Kris Iden’s intaglio prints and encaustic drawings capture the intricate beauty and fragility of the natural world. A years-long investigation of formal and material concerns in intaglio printing has led the artist to both complexity and reduction in her work. Numerous etching plates are often used in a single work to layer compositional elements and interweave structure with metaphor. Fragments of poetic verse metamorphose into natural landscape elements as they float within the visual space of Iden’s intaglio prints. In her encaustic works, the beeswax evokes a harmonious union between the organic and the ethereal, and also serves as a natural preservative for the artwork itself. Kris Iden received her B.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University in Fine Arts, Printmaking and Painting, and received her M.F.A. from VCU in Printmaking. She has been the recipient of multiple awards including a prestigious 6-week residency in Denkmalschmiede Höfgen, Germany, and her artwork graces significant private and public collections, including those of Hollins University and Mary Baldwin College.