SUSAN AULIK
with
DORIAN REID and LATEFA NOORZAI
Portraits of Friends
June 1 - July 13
SUSAN AULIK, Aurora, 2024, mixed media collage, 32" x 27" framed
SUSAN AULIK, Donald Darcy, M.D., 2024, mixed media collage, 26" x 24" framed
SUSAN AULIK
"Making art is full of surprises and I wouldn’t have it any other way. For years, I made large scale, non-objective, abstract oil paintings in which surface and paint handling were the primary focus. When shelter-in-place began, mysteriously, uninvited figures, creatures and assorted odd animals began to appear on my canvas, usually in the form of collage.
As time went on, I accepted the fact that I was making portraits of weirdos whether I consciously chose to or not. Finally, I said “enough”; no more weirdos. But the creative urge is subversive and clever; they brought me flowers trying to bribe their way into my studio and onto my canvas. It worked.
The result was a series of slightly strange floral collages. Shelter in place has come and gone but weirdo portraits and odd bouquets remain–they just keep showing up. The muse speaks; the artist obeys."
DORIAN REID, Lucky the Dragon, 2024, Glazed ceramic, 16 x 13 x 14.5"
(head removes, meant to hold incense, nostrils smoke)
Courtesy of NIAD
DORIAN REID
"Drawing inspiration from diverse interests – including animals and the environment, identity, family history, and civil rights activism, Dorrie Reid’s disarming works reflect a joyful approach to art-making. Endlessly imaginative, her artistic practice becomes a natural extension of memory and personal experience.
Born and raised in the Bay Area, Dorrie Reid was first introduced to art-making early on in school, primarily through drawing. Reid currently attends NIAD Art Center’s studio three days a week, where she has worked across a wide range of media over the past two decades. Recurring themes for Reid are significant seasons and times of year, as well as numerous iterations of the Black Panther slogan “All Power to the People,” realized as text-based prints, drawings, and elaborate quilts.
While Reid will sometimes produce functional vessels, her focus lies largely in playful ceramic depictions of exotic African mammals, wildcats, lop-eared rabbits, kittens, and horses. Incredibly evocative, this standout body of work carries the viewer through a shifting spectrum of wild personalities and emotional impressions: drowsy, startled, forlorn, cheerful, listless, rabid. Often both charming and unsettling, these objects bring to mind Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran’s ceramic monkeys, while also sharing remarkable similarities with Raquel Albarran’s vibrant tableaus. Asymmetrical facial structures and emblematic features remain consistent throughout – bulging eyeballs, undulating lips, flaring nostrils, and lolling tongues.
Working primarily from memory, her chosen subjects serve as initial guides for the art-making process, which seems to favor the exploration of materials and ideas surrounding a particular animal, rather than accurate representation. Occasionally she will use source imagery to mimic the coat markings of wildcats or distinctive horse stars and blazes.” (From Dorrie Reid in Disparate Minds)
LATEFA NOORZAI, LN 512, 2024, Acrylic and pen on paper, 44” x 30” Courtesy of Creative Growth
LATEFA NOORZAI
Born 1960 in Kabul, Afghanistan, Latefa Noorzai has practiced at Creative Growth since 2012. Noorzai, a native Farsi speaker and immigrant to the United States, quickly established her studio practice at Creative Growth despite obstacles of communication and cultural navigation. Noorzai’s tenacity is demonstrated in her bold portrait paintings inspired by a plethora of source material. Her strong and stark outlines, rendered with immediacy, provide loose structure for the heavy and confident brush strokes that permeate her figures with dynamic expression and presence. A master of color, Noorzai paints figures that are, like herself, bright, mercurial, and undaunted by the gaze of others. Noorzai’s work is included in Hannah Rieger’s permanent Art Brut Collection and was nominated for Outsider Art Fair’s Art Absolument Award in 2019.
SUSAN AULIK, Wilma, 2023, mixed media collage, 20” x 17” framed
SUSAN AULIK, Flowers from Fin, 2023, mixed media collage, 30” x 20”