Suzy McGrane-Hop of Gilded Pear Gallery and I were honored to be interviewed about my upcoming artist talk at Gilded Pear. Each week Dennis Green, interviews local people about their latest work and how they're helping make Iowa's Creative Corridor one of the best places to live and create. 

To see the interview, go to this link.

Special thanks to Suzy McGrane Hop of Gilded Pear Gallery for making this happen. Super thanks to Dennis Green and KCCK!!!!

Details:
"A Rainbow Colored Dream" Mary Zeran Solo Exhibit runs through January 19th at Gilded Pear Gallery.
Join Mary for a free Artist Talk on January 11, from 5:30-7:00p.m.

Kick the Winter Blues with an Art Exhibition in the Full Spectrum
 
Gilded Pear Gallery presents...
A Rainbow Colored Dream!    
Opening Reception: Friday, December 1st 5-7pm at Gilded Pear Gallery
An Artist Talk will follow on Thursday, January 11th, 5:30-7pm
Exhibition continues until January 19th
 
CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA.--Gilded Pear Gallery presents its annual solo exhibition from local artist, Mary Zeran. She is the recipient of several awards and honors and her works are in numerous public and private collections as well as many notable corporate collections. The collage works have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States and abroad including  the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art; Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, in Kansas City; SOIL Gallery in Seattle; Higher Art Gallery in Michigan; and Chaing Mai University in Chaing Mai, Thailand.
 
Mary Zeran grew up in a family of women artists whose textiles, embroidery, and woodcarvings, existed as their visual language; enigmatic shapes and forms were their words.  Each time she picks up a brush or scissors she immerses herself in the language of her family, which brings her ever closer to their traditions, histories, and stories. Abstracted flowers, trees, and all the colors of nature, speak her mother tongue. “When I conceived A Rainbow Colored Dream!, I dreamt of exploring colors I’d always feared and mixing new ones I’d never seen.  I had hopes that it would be a bold visual jump. Instead, the small increments and minor gradations captured my eye. I delved deep into layers, creating more unfamiliar patterns. Painted multi-colored dots that ran and beautiful expanses of patterned strips- I dared to form new relationships with these, as I cut new shapes,” says Zeran about the upcoming exhibit. Mary Zeran received her B.F.A and M.F.A from University of Iowa. She was born in Iowa City in 1964 and now lives and works in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
 
Gilded Pear Gallery is located at 808 Third Avenue SE, Cedar Rapids, IA 52403.  
Solo show of works by Mary Zeran

Gilded Pear Gallery
Address: 808 THIRD AVE. SE CEDAR RAPIDS, IOWA 52403
Phone: 319-366-0205
Email: Suzy@gildedpeargallery.com
​Lauren@gildedpeargallery.com

My work has been added to the list of prestigious artists who graduated from The University of Iowa School of Art and Art History.

Notice how my pieces photobombed a recent interview of Suzy McGrane-Hop/ Gilded Pear Gallery on Fox News. Congratulations to Suzy for sharing her expertise and for always supporting my work! Go to this link to see how a local man purchased art at a thrift store worth possibly hundred of dollars.

MG & M/ Manion Gaynor & Manning has eleven locations throughout the country. These pieces will be gracing the walls of their Miami, FL office. 

I'm delighted to share. My solo show at Higher Art Gallery was featured on GrafixArts Newsletter.  

Higher Art Gallery is having their One Year Anniversary Soiree and "Give the Gift of Art" Holiday Exhibit. I have 5 small works on paper included in this show.

Opening Reception:
November 3rd, 11am-7pm

Shanny Brooke, gallery director
126 S. Union Street
Traverse City, MI 49684

Tel: Gallery- 231-252-4616

https://www.higherartgallery.com

I've limited it to tones of teal, burgundy, orange, blue, and green.  It's been challenging, but exciting all at the same time. 

Solomon McCown is based in Boston, MA, but has an office in New York City. Their specialties are working with Corporate, Healthcare, Real Estate, Education, and Non-Profit groups to:

"define who they are, earn the recognition they deserve, and protect their reputations."

During that time, I didn't have a physical studio. At first, I made most of my art on the bus. Eventually, I switched  I noticed was texture was a very useful tool for designing gardens and picking fabric for a room.

Everyone who's ever gardened knows that after the blooms are gone, texture becomes the star. The best gardens include different sizes and shapes of leaves to create different sections of texture. A large patch of grass next to a patch of daisies creates contrast that gives a late season garden something subtle to ponder.

Looking at my reference photos, I realized many were devoted to leaf texture. I especially like them when they're dried. There's something about that process that creates even more variation in texture.

​There's a direct connection between what I see in nature and what comes out the end of my brush. Of course color aways brings something to the party, but notice how easy it is to see the texture and pattern when we look at these photos in black in white.

Exploring what happens when I combine two patterns together is a recent challenge. Transparency makes it possible for me to really push things and create new textures.

From the car or an airplane, it can appear so....brown...dry...dusty. On foot, its true complexity reveals itself.

Jeff and I just returned from our annual vacation. Normally, we go to Mexico and relish all it has to offer. This year we decided to shake things up and visit Tucson, AZ. One of our favorite things to do is walk. Or second vacation pleasure is taking tons, and tons of photos of anything that strikes our fancy. We like to call these "hiking tours", photo safaris. Over the years, I've noticed some ongoing themes are architecture and nature. Sure there'll be the occasional food, person, or dog photos, but most of the pics tend to be plants and architecture. We also tend to look and re-look at our images throughout the year.  These reference photos seem warm us during the cold Winter months.  

This post is the first of a few that I'll be doing about color, texture, form and pattern. It's my chance to show you some of the "reference" photos from our trips and see how they inspire my work. 

Enjoy!

This dusty blue, combined with the red fence tops, yellow Palo Verde blossoms, and orange adobe wall  just sang to me.

I love how the green of this cactus is silver or gray in parts and then vivid yellow in others. Don't over look that amazing blossom. I love how the light shines through its opaque petals.  Wow!!!

This is possibly one of my favorite color combos. I love how the teal trim balances or soothe the acid yellow adobe. Delicious!

Sometimes people think that because a painting has a minimal composition, that is was easy and quick to create. The reality is that the more  simple the composition, the longer it takes. Determining the thickness or a line or the shade of a color can take hours. It always amazes me how just shaving off a 1/2 inch can make all the difference between a successful piece and one that's just "meh".

The photos below show some of the decision making process for creating my new piece "The Season Had Changed". You can see how the pieces extended passed the cradled panel and had to be trimmed. How It took me a while to settle on the exact color of the purple rectangle and eventually ended up layering a piece of magenta woodgrain overtop to give it more depth.

There can be a lot of back and forth. For instance, should I have a blue vertical line or a yellow or maybe both. Notice the black swatches. Do you see how I must have adjusted them a million times before I settled on the final marks. Looking back at the first image, I liked the organic form on the bottom better, but by that time I'd stolen bits to add the black ball above the blue pour, and above the red and white rectangle.

It's amazing how long all this subtle tweaking can take. I keep hoping I'll get faster, but...I'm so seduced by the search for the perfect arrangement. Going through the motions is necessary to making sure I haven't left any idea unexplored.

​

One of my paintings was recently featured on Melanie By Design's blog.  This fantastic bathroom reno was designed by local designer Melanie Olson. Go to this link to see the before and after shots. This classic and funky space is one that anyone would love to have in their home.  

Thank you Melanie Olson for the feature!

Waiting for Snow, 30"x30", acrylic, Dura-Lar on paper, 2016 copyright Mary Zeran, available

Trying to get all the stuff that inspires me down into a 200 word paragraph has always been difficult. There's something about the word limit that paralyzes me. Plus, there's the fact that in my head, the words need to be swanky, or sound intelligent. All this fussing and parameters do nothing for my confidence. 

These two pieces and the below "narrative" are the first time I've talked about how science influences my work. I'll be writing more about this in the future, but until now....

"Mary Zeran’s (born 1964) paintings are like an imagined microscopic world.  By mixing different viscosities of paint onto polyester film, she exploits surface tension to produce organic shapes that mirror cells during division. Multiple sheets laminated together form passages of obsessively layered, intensely colored patterns only found in her imagination.​"

It Was Exhilarating, 30"x30", acrylic, Dura-Lar on paper, 2016 copyright Mary Zeran, available

You should have seen the "fights" or discussions I'd have with my mom. I just couldn't understand why it wasn't okay to mix lots of different patterns together.

Years later, I had the chance to take a skill  that was "automatic or easy" for me and use it to make money. For 8 years, I sold fabric to interior designers. My favorite part of the job was when they would request a group of fabrics for a room. They'd give me the color palette, style of the job, and whether they wanted prints, plaids, or stripes. I loved that part of my job. It was so much fun to see how creative I could get within the job's confines.

The past few weeks, I've been indulging myself in love of pattern....Really pushing it and seeing where it takes me. Playing with pattern makes me feel like a kid again. Somewhat naughty, but incredibly creative. What I've learned is, it's all about the balance between small, medium, and large sized patterns.

Listening Shift, 24"x36"x2", acrylic, Dura-Lar on cradled panel, 2016 copyright Mary Zeran, available

Fall Away, 30"x 30"x2", acrylic, Dura-Lar on cradled panel, 2017 copyright Mary Zeran, available

Late Bloomer, perseverance, and resilience. I've always valued being an artist because it's taught me there isn't any problem we can't solve if we just use some creativity.

In her most recent interview for Vasari21's, Ann Landi sensed the same thing about me and my path as an artist. I have to say that being interviewed by her was one of the most pleasant experiences. Ann did it old school, by calling me on the phone and asking questions. This way of working allowed me to just tell my story without overthinking, editing, and micro managing the outcome. 

Thank you Ann for featuring me and my work on Vasari21. I couldn't be more happy!

For those of you who want to read the article, you can either scroll down, but I think the better quality experience would be to go to Vasari21 here.

About: 
Ann Landi has been writing about art and artists for more than 20 years, mostly for ARTnews and the Wall Street Journal. She's the author of the four-volume Schirmer Encyclopedia of Art (Gale Broup, 2001) and earned degrees in art history from Princeton and Columbia. A long-time New Yorker, she relocated to Taos, NM, in 2011.

 My art was seen in a 2017 Super Bowl commercial! Actually, the point of the commercial was to advertise United Fire Group. The above photo shows employees and UFG's beautiful facilities.  My piece just happened to be on the wall. I'm thinking of it as my art photo bombed the shoot.

Here's to random delightful  things.  Thanks to my collector, United Fire Group for  this amazing bit of exposure. Extra thanks to Suzy McGrane Hop of Gilded Pear Gallery for introducing my art to them!

To see the whole commercial, to to this link.