Material Evidence is a selection of multimedia artworks by Robert Hanlon and Patricia Hanlon from the past 30 years. Though none of the individual works were collaborative, the exhibit springs from the common ground of a 46-year marriage, and from the Hanlons’ long-term involvement in their family business, Walker Creek Furniture.
The materials include byproducts of the furniture-building process; old tools and other human artifacts collected from flea markets; and all sorts of stuff retrieved from the trash, from roadsides, beaches and woodlands. The resulting artworks include furniture, collage, assemblage, paintings. Some stay still; some rotate and bounce and dance.
 

Robert: “‘Material’ implies stuff, but also, in the legal sense, relevance. Most of these materials are highly irrelevant, mostly pulled from, or moving toward, the rubbish bin. But when they take on the form of a creature, a person, or a turtle, they transcend their physical limitations and embody creation (and imply a Creator).”
 

Patricia: “This exhibit can be seen as a nudge not to ignore our discarded stuff, especially as it continues to pile up in our landfills and oceans. But we also hope to bear witness to the glorious variety of the Earth’s substances and processes—including, of course, the additional complexity of human making and unmaking.”

 

 MORE INFORMATION

 

​

​

​