In Black And White by Marge and Phil Moody

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Public Works Art Center

In Black And White by Marge and Phil Moody

West Gallery and Vault | March 20th – May 10th

Opening Reception: March 20th from 5:30pm – 8:30pm

ARTISTS’ STATEMENT:

This is the first time we have shown together. This is quite surprising, given we have been exhibiting our work since art school in the late 1960s. We thought it might be interesting to see whether there was anything in common to what we have been working on in recent years. As we selected our pieces, there seemed to be an interest in a strong use of some of the formal elements (line, value and shape in particular), while color has been kept at a quieter level. Rather than keeping the exhibition layout separated into our own bodies of work, we have arranged it quite organically, based on intuitively felt responses. Beyond these immediate observations, it remains to be seen what we find after installing the exhibition.

Marge Loudon Moody

As a painter, I typically work with a full palette of colors. By contrast, in this exhibition the paintings employ muted color – color that is intentionally ‘grayed’ or desaturated, either with the addition of the color’s complement or with a ‘chromatic dark’ (a mix of blue and brown that resembles black). In physics white is the presence of light (all colors) while black is its absence. In these paintings, black and white are used to highlight, define and emphasize, while the collages employ a full range of black papers, often against a white background. Several pieces in this show are selected from work where I’ve been experimenting with templates of various shapes and sizes, most often circles. Many of my ideas have come from my imagination and the environment around my home, and from visual notes while traveling.

Phil Moody

These photographs were made while artist-in-residence on several occasions in Portugal. I knew immediately on seeing the local marble quarry in Estremoz that I wanted to take black and white photographs, inspired by the high viewpoint of looking straight down 150 feet, at hoses, ladders, machinery and men at work. In due course I was trusted to descend in the tiny elevator and take the steep metal staircases to make pictures from a different point of view. I was taken by two university geologists to several other quarries in Borba and Villa Vicosa. Although I was using a camera, the imagery in my mind was that of drawing. When I worked on selected images it was with Photoshop tools that brought out contrast of smaller items set against an overall light field. The experience of being in a quarry of white marble in full sun was vivid and gave me a reference point for making prints that explore the upper end of the photographic tonal scale.

MARGE’S BIO:

Marge Moody is a Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts from Winthrop University, Rock Hill, South Carolina, where she taught for 30 years. She describes her work broadly as being environment based, which emanates from her experience of her home in South Carolina, through traveling, and from her imagination. She has exhibited her work in Great Britain, Washington, DC, New York, Chicago and various galleries in North and South Carolina. Some of her recent achievements include being accepted to the American Academy in Rome as a ‘Visiting Artist’ (March/April 2020) and to the National Association of Women Artists in New York City, and in 2015 she was awarded a one-person show (‘SM15’) at FRONT Art Space, Tribeca, New York, NY where she displayed 16 small works. She was invited to participate in the 15th Parallax Art Fair in Chelsea, London, England, in February 2016. In 2013 she had one-person exhibitions of her work in Chicago, Illinois, and in Great Britain, two of 6 shows she had in 2013 as part of her ‘Made In America: 1983 – 2013’ exhibitions. Her work was selected for the large exhibition, ‘Abstract Art in South Carolina 1949 – 2012’ at the SC State Museum, Columbia, SC. in 2012.

Marge’s work is part of many private and corporate collections in Great Britain and the US, including the South Carolina State Art Collection, the MUSC Contemporary Carolina

Collection, Williams and Fudge and the Winthrop University Collection. In 2021 a number of her works were purchased by The Beach Company, for the Jasper Condominiums and Apartments, Charleston, SC . She completed a residency at McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, NC in 2006 and at OBRAS, Portugal, in 2015. She is married to Phil Moody, photographer, and has 2 grown sons.

PHIL’S BIO:

Phil Moody is an award-winning photographer who taught at Winthrop University from 1985-2017. He came to the United States from Scotland to complete an MFA degree at The University of Michigan, during which time he studied sensitometry with Phil Davis. His work has centered on regional history and how it has left its trace on contemporary life. Projects have developed from personal experience in the places he has lived. After a series of portraits from his homeland, he made work in Detroit and continues to build on several series in South Carolina. For 5 years before the pandemic he returned to Portugal as artist-in-residence to make work from the marble quarries of the Alentejo, culminating in a one-person exhibition at Palacio dos Marqueses da Praia e Monforte, Estremoz. He has exhibited in England, Scotland, Portugal, Poland and the United States. He was the 2013 Society of Photographic Education South-East Conference Teacher of the Year. In 2004 he was the South Carolina Arts Commission Visual Arts Fellow. He was also the recipient of the national award, the 1997 Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching South Carolina Professor of the Year. His work is in collections at The Ogden Museum, New Orleans, South Carolina State Art Collection. Bank of America, Clemson University, and the Scottish Arts Council, among many others.

This event runs from 20 March 2025 through 10 May 2025, 10:00 AM - 05:00 PM