by: Jessica Cassyle Carr
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| Ray Maseman explains the etching process. |
Ray Maseman heralded in Heroes, Saints, and Expeditions on
the first Friday of February. The show, which runs through the end of the
month, is the loyal artist’s ninth at New Grounds. Maseman’s newest collection
of multiple plate etchings portrays lingering “meditations on existential
questions of purpose, home, and the burdens and responsibilities of adulthood,”
he explains in his artist statement. This existentialism is depicted through a lighthearted
collection of animal characters engaged in a variety of brave odysseys and
industrious undertakings. A cavalry of
carpenter penguins forges onward with their rulers, hammers, and saws. A
contemplative ram and potted tree are adrift in a wooden boat. The characters’
activities are often set in vast ocean scenes, inspired by Maseman’s
residencies afar in the Faroe Islands (an archipelago located between Iceland
and Norway and north of Scotland) during the past two summers. Other scenes
play out in desolate, jagged, ochre environments - an indirect reference to the
New Mexico landscape.
