Nancy Margolis Gallery is pleased to announce Maysey Craddock’s second solo show at the gallery. The opening reception will be September 8, 6 to 8pm.

Craddock’s studio, located in downtown Memphis in an old medicine factory at the end of a dead end street, surrounds her in traces of long gone industry and crumbling walls of buildings near old railroad tracks. Craddock uses photographs of the deteriorating landscape around her as the starting point and inspiration. Captivated and surprised by the beauty in these environments, she translates her impression into beautiful abstract paintings.

As her canvas she paints on recycled grocery bags sewn together with silk thread. This common material, often stained and ragged, has an interesting surface texture which adds to the feeling and emotion expressed in her images. The everyday, used quality of the brown paper bags gives her work a distinct character emphasizing the once new and discarded quality her images of urban wilderness portray.

Her images of old dilapidated buildings crumbling into the dirt are the crossroads between culture’s traces and nature’s reclamation. Expressing her own interpretation of these particular landscapes Craddock shows how our physical world reflects not only the present lives we live but the memories of the remains of the past.

Craddock received her BA in sculpture and anthropology at Tulane University, New Orleans, LA and her MFA at Maine College of Art, Portland, ME. Craddock has exhibited in many galleries in the US and in 2011 participated in residencies at the Maine College of Art, Portland, ME and St. Mary’s School, Memphis, TN. Her work is included is private and public collections including the prestigious Brooks Museum of Art, and the Assisi Foundation, in Memphis, TN.