Mary Pat Wager | Collections: A Retrospective

Exhibition dates: October 21 - November 21, 2014

Artist's Reception: Friday, November 7, 2014 @ 5:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m.

"Mary Pat Wager has been collecting, categorizing, assembling, re-organizing and making art for over 30 years. She is a multi-disciplinary artist, but works primarily with sculpture. Her diverse materials include precious metals, bronze, copper, stainless steel, farm equipment, clay, antiques as well as small acquired items and objects from nature--in her words, “the debris of one’s life after the valuable stuff has been removed.” She is a true collector and a quietly prolific artist.

My first visit to her studio spaces was nothing less than inspiring. As I drove up the steep, winding driveway, her large metal sculptures dotted the bucolic landscape. Her house, which was designed by her husband Art, is a gallery in itself--every room displaying work in all sizes and mediums. As she guided me through the house, it quickly became apparent that the work tells her story through the materials she chooses. One example can be seen in the neatly matted and framed assemblages made as she developed her skills working for a frame shop. She came to find the controlled borders of the frame comforting.

In her basement “indoor” studio, she has plastic containers and small boxes tightly packed with treasures that she has been given or discovered over the years—discarded pieces of bronze castings, tiny branches, bones, small paintings, old computer parts, rusted metal scraps, unique pieces, garage sale finds—specimens of time and debris. The materials are worn and carry meaning. The histories of the objects she is given are assimilated into her work. She recounts the stories behind many of them. They cover every surface of the studio. There are easily over a hundred works in progress lining the tables of the studio and hanging along the walls. They lay in wait, ready to be assembled.

Her outdoor studio, just up the hill from her house, is a warehouse of large collections-- steel, tools, farm equipment, wooden shelves and boxes, helium tank toppers, large stones, small stones, blue stones, gray stones. In the back of the shop, there is an area for her welding equipment next to a garage door that open up for the warm months to more collections just outside. There is also a glassed-in room with a wood stove for a warm working space in the winter. This giant studio houses dozens of pieces waiting to be assembled and large finished works. Visiting her studio is like an artist's playground or Christmas, rooms filled with well-stocked supplies of every kind. She is surrounded by such a well-kept potential. Wager says she has enough raw material to make work for the rest of her life, yet she continues to collect objects and the stories they are tied to.

In an attempt to further categorize the work, I view the majority of the work as specimens or altars. The specimens can be any sort of object; usually they are singular but they could be a small collection of objects. They become specimens when they are placed in “frames” such as wooden boxes, cardboard boxes, tin boxes, actual frames or mounted to matte board, wood or metal surfaces. The framing transforms the ordinary object into a revered one, something we might see in a museum or on display in someone’s home. Sometimes several specimens are grouped together to create large altar-like assemblages. The altar seems to be a reoccurring abstract motif, and there is certainly something ritualistic, even spiritual about the work.

There is an inherent search for balance in both materials and compositions. Often a strong geometric element is meticulously placed with a dripping organic form, bone with steel, a natural element with a man-made, menacing pieces mounted to smooth surfaces. The artist works methodically, experimenting with many elements until she is satisfied by the compositions. She balances two sensibilities of her own-- one more scientific and organized, one more interpretive or narrative. She says, “I feel like an archivist, preserving a visual history.” That feeling rings true as soon as you step into her studio, but she is also an interpreter of history through her arrangement of the work, alluding to a more spiritual aspect of her role.

The subject of the works ranges from figurative portraits, masks, narrative assemblage, to geometric abstraction, but all of it made from this vast collection of materials and all of it tied to a specific history. Time plays a central role in the work. The objects Wager uses are inescapably nostalgic—old, weathered, dated. She enjoys using objects that are obsolete and difficult to identify. Many of the pieces are motivated by memory and her own sense of time and place. Her working method is very much about time as well. Because she is simultaneously working on dozens of pieces, any given piece could take years to complete. Over the last two years of visits, I have watched the pieces and their stories unfold, sometimes slowly and almost unnoticeably, other times drastically. One work in-progress informs the development of another, the materials and stories weaving in and out of the work.

For this retrospective, I chose to focus on Wager‘s development and abstract use of material, the dialogue the work creates in the search for balance, and the autobiographic stories the materials tell about the life of this artist and her intersections with the lives of others. The work in this show has a strong geometric foundation, whether it be the grid or a more singular geometric shape, but is continually negotiating a relationship with an organic component. The work traces her exploration of materials from small bronze pieces in the eighties to her current multi-media assemblages of varying scales.

Wager lives and works in East Greenbush, NY and teaches in Averill Park. She has shown her work locally, nationally, and internationally. Her large scale work has been exhibited at many sculpture parks including Contemporary Outdoor Scultpure at Chesterwood in Stockbridge, MA; Ten Broeck Mansion, Albany, NY; and Butler Sculpture Park, Sheffield, MA. Her work was selected to represent the United States in the International Small Sculpture Exhibit in Budapest, Hungary, and received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Other venues include Cornell University, Skidmore College, Utica College of Syracuse University, Albany Institute of History and Art, the University Art Museum at State University of New York at Albany, Russell Sage College, and Franz Badder Gallery in Washington, DC."

Words by Jackie Weaver, Curator