Bergamot Station, 2525 Michigan Avenue, Building B3, Santa Monica, CA 90404
Saturday, October 19 at 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Ends Oct 30, 2024
In her second exhibition of textile “paintings” at Craig Krull Gallery, Debbie McAfee offers intimate windows into the contemplative quiet of desert dawns and dusks. A longtime resident of the high desert in Southern California, McAfee has driven and walked the land for years, observing and recording the terrain around her. In the summer, the nighttime provides respite from the hot, dry days; in the winter, night is brisk and challenging.
McAfee’s newest nightscapes dance between these poles—the artist employs swathes of swirling cloth and an Impressionist’s attention to color to create tactile vistas that are both whimsical and reverent. A diligent documentarian, McAfee sorts through her archive of images to find the right reference from which to begin. She then splices the frame into squares, pruning trees and rocks into geometric shapes adorned with topographic stitching and re-presenting fragments with collaged and sewn fabric. These joyful renderings of rock formations and Joshua trees celebrate the land’s beauty, while dark skies are thrown in relief with stark white stars. All together, these tender renderings of stone and shadow illuminate a world of wonder.