Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary by June mattingly // regularmain.com

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Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary
by June mattingly // regularmain.com

Mary McCleary was one of the first artists Mattingly Baker Gallery represented and gave their
first gallery show. Mary walked into my gallery one day in the very early 80s with her husband
dressed quite conservatively, no indication she was an artist much less an artist creating
individualistic, imaginative abstract 3-D cut paper collages.

Songs of Extinct Birds- Passenger Pigeon | 14 x 12.325 inches 2009, Mixed Media Collage on Paper

Her more complex, now realistic, symbolic compositions require a long, obsessive
process of assemblage. Subjects range from still lifes, seascapes, housescapes,
nature and figures, still always bearing the McCleary signature touch, most
importantly. Over heavy paper she attaches layer upon layer of such a
variety of small artist-manipulated objects as cut paper, foil, glitter, costume
jewelry, fabric swatches, broken mirrors, pencils, nails, glass, painted toothpicks,
string, leather and plastic children’s toys combined with paint.

“I am interested in the spatial complexity and visual tensions that come from the
collages being illusionistic, while at the same time composed of three-dimensional
objects that often retain their own identity. Drawing my subject matter from history
and literature, I like the irony of using materials that are often trivial, foolish, and
temporal to express ideas of what is significant, timeless, and transcendent.

Time as a Painter | 59.75 x 45.25 inches 2010, Mixed Media Collage on Paper

Mary taught at Stephen F. Austin State University for 30 years until 2005. Born in Houston,
she received her BFA at TCU. She’s participated in over 250 one-person and group
exhibits in museums and galleries in 24 states, Mexico, and Russia. Venues include the
National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Grey Gallery at Columbia University, the
Boston Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Contemporary Art Museum in
Houston, the San Antonio Museum of Art, and the Nelson-Atkins Museum.

St. Elmo’s Fire | 11.5 x 13 inches 2010, Mixed Media Collage on Paper

I ran across Mary’s new works on the Moody Gallery’s website where I discovered she’ll
have a one-person exhibit at the Grace Museum in Abilene opening January 2011 and
her next one-person at Moody Gallery in the spring of 2011.