12 X 12: Katy Mixon

July 18 to August 20, 2017

Opening Reception: July 18, 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM

Katy Mixon's studio process involves painting numerous layers of oil paint to a panel and then carving back into the paint to reveal built-up surface complexity. The harvested chips of paint then become used to start new work, seeds to germinate new paintings. Like a process of tillage, Mixon's paintings grow to reveal crops of color, pattern, and form.

About the Artist

Durham-based painter Katy Mixon hails from Orangeburg, South Carolina. In 2015 she completed her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She was a teaching fellow at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and holds a B.A. in Studio Art from Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina. Solo exhibitions include Glossolalia: The Map Is Not The Territory, Allcott Gallery, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Brush Abandoned at 10 Storehouse Row, in North Charleston, South Carolina; Lines and Layers, North Charleston City Gallery, North Charleston, South Carolina; Dwell at the Van Every/Smith Gallery, Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina. She has been included in group shows in Venice, Italy, Boston, Massachusetts, North and South Carolina.

About 12 x 12

12 x 12 artist salon series presents 12 artists from North Carolina, the 12th State. Each Salon is a pop-up exhibition and conversation with the artist. The series schedule consists of three exhibitions per spring and fall seasons in 2016 and 2017, beginning March 1st, 2016. At the end of the salons, a group exhibition in our Potter Gallery will bring together all twelve artists.

The twelve artists in the series represent a diversity of artistic practices and cultural backgrounds. At salon events, each artist will share ideas and processes of their studio practice in the midst of recent, new, or site-specific work presented in SECCA's Preview Gallery. Each artist will discuss their experience first-hand, inviting the public to ask questions and to engage in conversation. Like a studio visit, these salon events are a social space for the discovery and discussion, providing invaluable feedback to artists and insights to those who come to experience them.

12 x 12 gives artists from across North Carolina a public platform for continued artistic development and recognition in the place where they live and work, and beyond. At the same time, the series aims to push conversation around contemporary art forward and to consider the significance of localism as a curatorial framework. What does it mean to these artists to be working in the South and Southeast today, especially after the Internet and Globalization?

The 12 x 12 artists were selected by Cora Fisher (Curator of Contemporary Art, SECCA) and four guest jurors: Linda Dougherty (Chief Curator & Curator of Contemporary Art, North Carolina Museum of Art); Lia Newman (Director and Curator of the Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College); Marshall Price (Nancy Hanks Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University); and Mary Anne Redding (Curator, Turchin Center for the Visual Arts).

An arts initiative sponsored by the Flow Foundation.