{9} the Gallery hosted an artist reception Friday evening with the artists featured in their monthly exhibition that opened on Sept. 5.
The gallery, located at Grand Avenue and McKinley Street, featured contemporary artists Dino Paul and Mikey Jackson, whose works encompass very different styles, but both use women as a focal point.
Paul’s work contains many bright colors and features women in fashionable hats.
“I think hats are a symbolic gesture of individualism,” Paul said. “They stand out.”
Paul has been working on his “Eye-Lids-Hats” collection for nearly three years and it has only continued to grow. He has constantly looked for different hat inspirations in stock photos and magazines.
After he finds inspiration, he will start by drawing the hat out in pencil. Next Paul converts everything into different colored prints. He uses acetone and paint thinners to melt the ink into different papers. He assembles these papers to make the final print, which is later embellished with pastels.
Paul said he only creates three to five prints of each of his paintings. His favorite piece showing in {9} The Gallery is the portrait he did of a cowgirl with long, detailed braids.
“I think it has a lot of depth and I’m really happy how the shirt and scarf came out,” he said.
Contrasting with Paul’s bright paintings on the other side of the gallery were Jackson’s paintings that used blue hues to depict women in more abstract ways.
“Typically I do more realism stuff, but this is kind of still that with some abstractions around it,” Jackson said. “They are kind of just memories or feelings. They have some ambiguous parts mostly. They’re just personal and open to what you want to interpret.”
Jackson has plans to move to New York and pursue his art career. He said he recently moved out of his apartment of five years and the change in his life prompted a lot of this collection.
“I’ve been going through a lot of disconnection and attachment,” he said. “I think letting go has inspired me to do all of this and try something new.”
Jackson typically uses oil paints on birch wood, and for this collection he also used graphite.
“Oil takes hours and days to dry so the paintings still feel alive and maybe in two hours if you don’t like something you can move it around,” he said.
Jackson said he has only painted one painting in his career with a male subject and doesn’t think he will again.
“It doesn’t speak to me the same. I can create these and get lost in their faces and all the layering of paint,” Jackson said. “To dive into a male face, it is almost like staring at yourself even though it’s not. It’s too familiar.”
Laura Dragon, owner of {9} the Gallery, titled September’s exhibit “Isn’t She Lovely” because both artists used women as their focal point. Dragon said she felt their works would show well together.
“I just really felt that the two of their works were different enough that they could really stand on their own but also that would lend themselves to one another,” Dragon said.
The exhibition title also came from the relevance Dragon felt the Stevie Wonder song of the same name had in connection to the ’70s and ’80s time period.
“I’m from that era I guess,” Dragon said. “I just had the Stevie Wonder song in my head and it just resonated. There is something very Studio 54 about the way this work looks and that’s about the time that song came out so it just fit for me.”
After meeting Paul a year ago, Dragon knew she wanted to show his pieces in the gallery. She said his work reminded her of the women she used to see walking down Madison Avenue in over-the-top fashions.
“I love the women in hats. I grew up in New York and his style resonates with art and culture and fashion,” she said. “There’s just something about the eyes in the women he portrays. I love their lashes. There is just a lot of character and depth in those for me.”
Dragon said she wanted another artist who complemented Paul’s work to show alongside him.
“Mikey Jackson’s work, historically speaking, has been more portraits of women,” Dragon said. “However, I love the direction he is taking in this particular body of work with the full figurative expression.”
She said she finds Jackson’s oil and graphite combination very moving and is excited for his new journey in New York.
“I love to see emerging artists move to the next phase in their career and their development,” she said. “I love that we can be a springboard for that.”
Paul and Jackson’s work will remain on display in {9} the Gallery until First Friday on Oct. 3.
Contact the reporter at Taylor.Brightwell@asu.edu
