ARTIST STATEMENT

My earliest memories are those of my father’s musty, cluttered workrooms filled with rolls of fabric and his upholstery shop floor littered with tacks, trimmings, and thread. In these musty spaces where I spent much time as a youngster, the layers of lint seemed to provide fertile soil for my artistic vision. Much like cutting the foam and cotton fillers for a sofa pillow, over many years my artistic vision evolved into a presentation of natural textures and quilt-like patterns within designated spaces.

For me, art-making is primarily an exercise in crafting objects made from natural materials like wood, leather, paper, and stone combined with fabrics like those in my father’s upholstery shop and my mother’s sewing basket. My selective use of color is a result of trusting those colors often inherent to the natural or re-purposed materials I select. By allowing the colors and textures of found and re-assigned objects to speak for themselves, my job becomes more that of an organizer or shepherd.

Within the patterns and textures of my work, a repetitive language speaks with rhythmic simplicity. My work speaks minimally and presents few identifiable visual references. To consider my art is to pause and contemplate the work as a suggestion of organizational and contextual reassignments and realignments. The altered contexts of the assembled materials and patterns speak naturally, simply, and without judgment. This simple reordering of the commonplace presents viewers only with clues and asks them to consider a shared mystery.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Gary Anderson is a mixed media and fiber artist currently residing in Georgetown, Texas. Anderson received his Bachelor’s degree in art education from Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University) in 1974 and his M.F.A. degree from the University of Texas in 1984. He retired from the classroom in 2003, to begin exploring mixed media, fabric, and textiles.

Gary Anderson has shown work at numerous art festivals, galleries, and venues, and has been represented by galleries in Austin and throughout central Texas, and has won awards for his work in juried area exhibits. Anderson currently serves as Exhibits Coordinator at Georgetown Art Center, where he served on the board of directors from 2011-2014. The Georgetown City Council appointed Anderson to the Georgetown Arts and Culture Advisory Board in 2012 where he served until 2016, and was chosen as a Hometown Hero in 2022 for his service to the Georgetown visual arts community.