cabinets, tree stands and a few fish
Martin-mullen art gallery @ Suny oneonta
January 23 - March 9, 2024
Timothy Sheesley (SUNY Oneonta ‘78) is a Tamarind Master Printer and owner of Corridor Press and Otsdawa LLC in Otego, NY. His introduction to printmaking was through James Mullen, a beloved professor and the Galleries’ original director, and he received his MFA in printmaking from Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia. Sheesley himself ran the Galleries for years, so it’s fitting that this exhibition is held at the school where he began his career and in the space where he left an indelible mark.
Cabinets, Tree Stands, and a Few Fish is a collection of lithographs created over close to thirty years and demonstrates Sheesley’s keen eye for detail and color. In addition, each print is an intuitive meditation on personal memory, lived experience, and the things we keep. The densely saturated colors encourage the viewer to look deeply, and the cloying imagery plucks at the edge of the mind, reminiscent of half noticed details and objects infused with meaning. Desiccated cats, wooden monkeys, locks, fish, and more are placed above a simple but special cabinet. Each print is made in variations – the same design with different colors – as if the object or memory is being picked up, re-examined, and filtered through time.
Color lithographs are created through multiple runs, built layers laid down one at a time with their own color separation design, and Sheesley often uses five to six layers for a complete print. This process is inherently laborious and complicated, “a state of uncertainty,” but that is part of the beauty and reward. It is the ritualistic nature of building layers run by run, pulling the final print from the mind and pressing it into the paper, that leads to images of such depth.
Opening reception Thursday, February 1, 2024. Exhibition hours and location.
Exhibition description courtesy of Sarah Simpson, Martin-Mullen Art Gallery Director.