NOTES TO SELF: AN INSTALLATION BY DEANNA SIRLIN

The Galleries of the Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech
349 Ferst Drive NW
Atlanta, GA 30332-0468

July 6 - August 31, 2006
Galleries are accessible Monday through Friday, 9:00am - 5:00pm by calling 404 894 2787

Opening Reception: Thursday, July 6, 2006, 6:00pm – 8:00pm

For more information on Deanna Sirlin's work, please visit www.deannasirlin.com

The Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech is pleased to announce the exhibition of NOTES TO SELF, a new installation by Atlanta-based artist Deanna Sirlin, made especially for the Ferst Center. Elements of the installation will be available for purchase at modest cost. Ms. Sirlin will donate a percentage of her sales to the Ferst Center to benefit the arts at Georgia Tech.

NOTES TO SELF continues Sirlin's exploration of different modalities for the presentation of motifs she has discovered in painting, her primary form of expression. In this new installation, Sirlin juxtaposes the immediacy of gestural painting with the regularity of a mass-produced form. Noted as a colorist, Sirlin here focuses on the vibrancy of shape, stroke, and gesture. The installation is in two parts, each occupying one of the Ferst Center's galleries.

Since 9/11, Sirlin has wanted her work to be joyful and life-affirming. Filled with abstract circular shapes that are wide open to interpretation, her images are energetic and energizing. As Sirlin describes her gesture, "The search for the self in my own art has become a place for me to stay and consider. With each stroke I am refinding myself, circling myself and rearticulating myself. I dig deeper, like an archaeologist cataloging, revealing, securing and seeing as I go. But most of all these works express for me a found pleasure in the world. I am reinventing that happiness in the language of painting."