Press Release

NEW ORLEANS - Heriard-Cimino Gallery presents Apogee, tapestries by Shawne Major. The exhibition will be on view from May 6 through June 30, 2006. An opening reception to meet the artist will be held Saturday, May 6 from 6 to 9 p.m. in conjunction with Jammin’ on Julia. The public is invited. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 10 to 5, or by appointment.

Shawne Major approaches her work as a bricoleur. Bricoleurs are comfortable in unfamiliar realms of learning and experience because they learn best by using indirect connections to known information. Major’s beguiling tapestries are fetishistically bejeweled with glass, beads, buttons, animals, miniature fruit, sequins, and silk flowers. Major choreographs these elements into each composition, and within each tapestry creates her own cosmology. Conjuring miniature characters and symbols as metaphors, she explores humanity’s place within the world.

The artist states, “Within my art practice I use a bricoleur approach to create a magical and sacred space that is a distillation of ideas, memories and fragments of experience associated with growing up in Southwestern Louisiana. Materials and the processes by which they are joined are crucial to production of my meaning. These object and material choices draw heavily upon my identity as a woman of working class southern background. My vocabulary - a combination of kitsch, ersatz and craft materials, objets trouve, personal objects, traditional feminine elements (lace, ribbon, dress patterns, etc.) - is reaesthetisized into form derived from childhood memory.” Whether her tapestries are viewed closely or at a distance, Major allows us to enter and navigate throughout her fascinating universe.

About the artist:
Shawne Major was born in New Iberia, LA. She received her BFA from the University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette and her MFA from Rutgers University. She lived in New York for nine years before returning to Southwest Louisiana. Major’s work can be found at the Paul and Lulu Hilliard Museum of Art in Lafayette and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. Presently, Major has a solo exhibition at the Alexandria Museum of Art in Louisiana. Her work has been shown in New York, Washington D.C., Oregon, and the Textile Arts Center in Chicago. This is her first solo exhibition with Heriard-Cimino Gallery.