Dowd Gallery to Showcase 35-year Artists’ Collaboration

10/08/2024

In 1977, when American sculptor Allen Mooney and the late British-born painter Paul Chambers first met as graduate students in the MFA program at Cornell University, they seemed unlikely to spend the next 35 years in intense, artistic collaboration.

Mooney was a native of Los Angeles and a child of Mexican and Irish heritage who emerged from a formalist background in sculpture. He would become a SUNY Cortland professor of art and art history, now emeritus.

Meanwhile Chambers, who evolved into an abstract political landscape painter, was a native of Lincolnshire, England, home of the Magna Carta, and a descendent of a long line of British Parliamentarians. Born in 1951, Chambers followed his career in Trumansburg, N.Y., and died in 2012.

"What might upon first glance seem an unlikely pairing turned out to be a lifelong artistic friendship that asserted meaningful influence upon both artists," said Wylie Schwartz, SUNY Cortland assistant professor of art and art history, to whom Chambers was both friend and mentor.

Schwartz and Scott Oldfield, the interim director of Dowd Gallery, together are curating "Timestamps," the upcoming Dowd Gallery exhibition of this unlikely artistic exchange, which opens on Monday, Oct. 21.

"Timestamps," which will run through Friday, Dec. 13, will showcase paintings, sculptures, drawings and collected objects by the British and American friends.

An opening reception will be held at the Dowd Fine Arts Center gallery starting at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 24. Refreshments will be served. The opening reception and exhibition are free and open to the public, as are all exhibition-related events.

Related events include:

• Gallery talk: Wednesday, Nov. 6. Schwartz will present "Loincloths and Plimsoll Lines: Excavating the Political Landscape," a discussion on the life and paintings of Chambers. The gallery talk begins at 5 p.m.
• Gallery talk: Thursday, Nov. 21. Artist and educator Mooney discusses how metaphor, meaning and human perception relate to the work on display. Titled "Metaphor and Meaning in Biographical Time and Space," the gallery lecture will start at 5 p.m.

"Timestamps" aims to uncover the thematic interplay between Chambers' and Mooney's artistic practices, drawing attention to the connective tissue that intersects within their theoretical and aesthetic frameworks.

"Taking a closer look at these two important figures, this exhibition highlights the aesthetic, philosophical and political concerns that preoccupy both artists," Schwartz said.

Broad themes of war and peace, the communicative power of art, metaphor and meaning and human perception play an integral role in much of the work on view, she said.

"From Mooney's early experimentation with neon to the relentlessly sharp bits and pieces that reoccur throughout his sculptural forms, he investigates the ambient psychological effects of perception upon human psychology," Schwartz said.

Much of Mooney's work was produced during the 19 years he taught sculpture at SUNY Cortland. The sculptor's pieces have drawn inspiration from the formative relationships that shaped the artist's life, his experiences as a veteran of the Vietnam War, and employment that included, among many things, apprentice ironworker and commercial fishing off the Pacific coast.

"Mooney's work is decidedly biographical, acting as metaphors that attempt to fix time and space," Schwartz said.

If Mooney's work seeks to affect the way the viewer feels, Chambers was more concerned with art's potential to affect how one thinks.

"Chambers' colorful and provocative abstractions operate as the communicative vehicle through which he expresses larger ideas regarding his intense desire for lasting international peace," Schwartz said. "Many of his paintings hold 'keys' to solving some of the world's more intricate political issues, existing like puzzles - mysteriously cryptic visual languages waiting to be deciphered."

An avid stamp collector since childhood, Chambers saw the U.K.'s Universal Postal Union - which survived both world wars - as an organization representing the universal acceptance that sharing of goods, ideas and art on a level playing field are of great value in society.

"His continued reference to the legacy of the Transorma, a letter sorting machine invented by the Dutch in 1927, operates as an ongoing metaphor for the transporting and sorting of data that characterizes the human experience," she said.

As each piece of mail passing through the Transorma received an ident - a pair of letters operating as a time stamp - the works on display in this exhibition function in a similar mode: markers denoting specific historical moments.

"Viewed collectively, what surfaces in this show is a distinctive presentation of a set of aesthetic-politico ideas, values and themes that are as much a response to the time they were made as they are prophetic visions of the future," she said.

Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday; 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday; and by appointment. The gallery is closed on weekends.

Visit Dowd Gallery on Instagram or Facebook for detailed information about other programs, links to invitations for virtual events and artists' profiles.

Group tours are available and can be arranged by contacting Oldfield at 607-753-4216.

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