Something Darkly

July 18 – September 30, 2023

First Friday Reception, August 4, 6-8pm

First Friday Gallery Walk, September 1, 6-8pm

Artists featured:

Holly Downing, California

Lana Miller, Nebraska

Tracy Templeton, Indiana

A new exhibition at Constellation Studios will be presented with a First Friday Reception, August 4^th, from 6-8pm.  Something Darkly suggests the common perception of the “dark of night”, dark times, and darkly mysterious environments, here created by the artists’ aesthetic choices and technical means.  This exhibition and theme present rich dark tonalities in the artworks to create graphically charged spaces for the senses and forms; the artists push the dichotomy of the production processes that use flat surfaces of plates, paper, inkjet into volumetric illusions.  Tracy Templeton’s large digital prints on fabric present flowing and mysterious empty beds that suggest a missing dreamer in the snowy landscape of the far north.   Lana Miller draws obsessively with pen to reach a dark saturation of surface, with inherent rhythmic patterning, while vessels or rock-forms emerge on a stage as stacked cairns offering a minute sculptural presence.  Holly Downing studies the drapery of a set still -life that contemplates lost presence and quietude, the extinction possibilities of precious life forms, and natural flow patterns through the mezzotint technique.

Something Darkly continues a series of exhibitions addressing major natural and environmental elements that evoke multiple social, political, economic, psychological, and cultural interests.  Exhibitions on water and land have been presented in 2023.

Tracy Templeton is an Associate Professor and Head of Printmaking at Indiana University, Bloomington.  Her MFA is from University of Alberta, Canada, and BFA from University of Regina, Canada.   She has an extensive international exhibition record, and has visited as guest artist in Warsaw, Kyoto, Buenos Aires among other interesting venues.

Lana Miller is a well-known Lincoln artist having shown extensively in the region.   She has a BFA & MFA from University of Nebraska-Lincoln.  She has taught art and design classes as a visiting lecturer and assistant professor.  Her works are in the Hallmark Art Collection, the Museum of Nebraska Art, and the Sheldon Art Museum, and other numerous private collections in the US.

Holly Downing studied painting and printmaking at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the Royal College of Art, London. She lived in the UK for 6 years where she received a National Endowment Fellowship to research and make mezzotints. Her works have been exhibited in exhibitions in London, Edinburgh, Manila, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco.   Her work is in many collections including the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Fine Art Museums of San Francisco, Victoria and Albert Museum, Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum and the Bibliotheque Nationale.