Aarhus Gallery

Guest Artist Dudley Zopp, Aug 12-31

Opening Reception, August 15th

Dudley Zopp's artist talk will be on Tuesday August 19th 7pm

Also showing the work of Kevin Johnson, Mark Kelly, Annadeene Konesni, Richard Mann, Wesley Reddick, Willy Reddick, and Maine artisans.

Dudley Zopp, Bio

Dudley Zopp is a painter of abstract landscapes and an installation artist, with a strong interest in environmental and collaborative projects, most recently Walking in Time at Waterfall Arts in Belfast, Maine, and earlier at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. Her work engages mediums and forms from large scale installations to small works on paper, but always joins a fascination with geological formations to an obsession for locating image through process.

Among her awards are a 2002 Individual Artist’s Fellowship from the Maine Arts Commission and a Studio Residency by the Pouch Cove Foundation, Saint Johns, Newfoundland. The Boston Athenaeum, University of Chicago Library, Farnsworth Art Museum and NoxBox (Mainz, Germany) own works by her.

A native of Lexington, Kentucky, she holds a B.A. and M.A. in Modern Foreign Languages from the University of Kentucky, Lexington, and did post-graduate work in Painting and Drawing at the Allen R. Hite Art Institute, University of Louisville.

Dudley Zopp, Artist Statement
Geologics and Erosion Paintings

The Geologics and Erosion paintings reveal my passion for paint and my deeply felt connection to the earth. I have always been willing to let process determine image, and over time, I have developed a way of moving and layering paint that mimics the slow build-up and precipitous shifting of the sediments and magma that form our planet. In the abstract patterning of the paintings, I am exploring the ways rocks are formed and distributed in the landscape.

These abstract patterns are also objects of meditation, reminders of place and of the geological forces that formed our contemporary landscape. They provide the viewer a way of penetrating layers of memory, of going deep into one’s psyche to examine our place in the landscape and our way of being in the world.

My paintings are about time and where we fit into this present moment, knowing that our lives are bounded by a past measured in thousands of millions of years of geological time, and by a future measured in the slow growth of organic life, an unknowable future of which we are the accidental stewards.

Here's a multimedia slide show of Dudley's Aarhus installation featuring comments by Dudley and music by Massive Attack.

An Interview with Dudley Zopp

By Chyrenheppa Diefendorf

Chyrenheppa Diefendorf is a noted lecturer and writer based in mid-coast Maine. She is the author of three books: Job's Daughters and the Logos Structure, Rocks and People: Their Similarities and Differences, and Arranging Paintings: How Not To. She conducted a virtual interview with painter and installation artist Dudley Zopp at the artist's studio in Lincolnville. Ms. Zopp has agreed to publish the interview in lieu of an artist's statement.

CD: Ms. Zopp, I'm honored that you've agreed to meet with me today. I've heard that you are reluctant to talk about your work and that in fact you grant very few interviews.

DZ: That's total fiction.

CD: Well, I'd like to begin by asking about the Erosions group of paintings currently being exhibited at Coppershed and Aarhus galleries. How and where did you begin?

DZ: I prefer to think of these as drawings rather than paintings, because of the immediacy of their making. However, I think most people understand them as paintings since the acrylic medium is what remains on the paper post-process.

CD: We do see evidence of drawing in the graphite lines that delineate rock shapes. It also appears that you've used a great deal of water. How is that important?

DZ: I'm interested in Time as revealed by the speed of Elements. For instance, sludge moves very slowly. Wind and Fire move quickly. Water generally moves quickly unless impeded by heavier materials, and it is this process of water being impeded that forms the imagery in these paintings.

CD: Sometimes the water seems to flow upward. I know that you practice yoga. Did you stand on your head to make these paintings?

DZ: No – I make them all so that the water flows down or out, but once they're done, I orient them according to the dominant compositional energy, and sometimes decide to present them in the opposite direction from their original orientation. When you think about it, this mimics plate tectonics, which accounts for layers of the earth having been turned upside down and sideways.

CD: Looking again at the graphite lines in the paintings, I'm wondering why you've left some of them unpainted, giving the whole an unfinished look.

DZ: As in the drawings, so also with the earth. It is not done yet. The plates are moving as we speak.

CD: Are there particular inspirations you'd like to mention?

DZ: Highway road cuts between Brunswick and Portland, and at the Verona Island bridge. Also Lincolnville and Jasper beaches.

CD: Thank you so much, Ms. Zopp. I'm fascinated by your process, and feel that though we'd never met until today, we are somehow kindred spirits.

DZ: Indeed, I think we share not only common interests but oddly enough, the same parents.

© Chyrenheppa Diefendorf, Lincolnville, Maine 2008

Dudley Zopp, Lincolnville, Maine 2008
Website: www.dudleyzopp.net
Blog: www.zoppnews.blogspot.com