Slate Gray South presents Efflorescence featuring Dana Flores & Christopher Peter. Efflorescence – or the action of developing and unfolding as if coming into flower or blossoming – captures the root nature of both Dana Flores’ and Christopher Peter’s art.
Los Angeles based sculptural ceramic artist, Dana Flores, has been making ceramics for almost 30 years. For this current body of work, she pulls from her love of nature and history; ancient carvings of Mayan temples, rough stoneware, jungles, volcanos, Joshua Tree, seeds, rocks, leaves, and flowers. Flores starts by hand- throwing small slabs of clay into different forms, manipulates each piece, shaping until each petal comes to life. Flores makes about 20-30 petals in a session, those petals almost fall into place, becoming a distinct flower. Flores’ floral ceramics are rustic, raw, and fluid like a giant flower from a petrified garden.
On the opposite coast in Boston, mixed media artist Christopher Peter blurs genres of abstraction, florals, landscapes, and figures to imagine his silhouettes. His paintings are depicted through complex layers of mixed media elements; handmade papers, vintage roadmaps, marbled textiles, repurposed book pages, silkscreens, and acrylic and oil paints. Although originally from Phoenix, it was his move to Boston that ignited a vision for his series, Born to Bloom, inspired by Boston’s exuberant display of spring flowers. The sequence – daffodils in earl April, cherry blossoms in late April, tulips in early May, peonies in mid May, roses in early June and so on – bloom and wilt. Each phase just as mesmerizing as the previous stage. His works are beautifully honest, full of positivity, and a celebration of brilliant color, movement, and light.
