Collen McCubbin Stepanic, “Current,” June 23 – August 4, 2017

Exhibition Catalog, Colleen McCubbin Stepanic and Laura Borneman

Colleen Stepanic’s artwork focus on the parallels between geological processes and human experience. She draws connections between the ways in which earth is built up, saved, and destroyed through natural cycles and the way one’s own life events are similarly dynamic and cyclical. These works utilize geological references as a starting point for her physically dynamic works.

Each object begins as a painting where McCubbin Stepanic expressively records her personal observations and experiences. Line, color, and gesture chart her actions and reactions across the canvas. Using process as a metaphor, she then abandons the late plane of traditional easel painting, engaging in a number of aggressive actions against the basic structure of the painting. Attacking the surface with pigment, scissors, and needles, she wrestles the expansive canvas through the sewing machine, binding it together with millions of precise stitches. These actions are part of the labor critical to her artmaking. Like a mantra or a rote prayer, this action builds the intensity of the experience for both the artist and viewer. These actions, however, do not fully determine the final form of the artwork. Internal tensions created during the assembly processes work both with and gainst the installation systems, amplifying the irregularities and uncertainties present in both geological processes and human experiences.

Colleen McCubbin Stepanic was born in Newport News, Virginia, and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, Cleavaldn, and Washington DC. She earned a BFA from the University of Dayton and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art. McCubbin Stepanic has been the recipient of numerous grants, awards, and residencies including the Joan Mitchell Center, the Millay Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center. She has been included in exhibitions at The LaGrange Art Museum in LaGrange, Georgia, the Susquehanna Museum of Art in Harrisburg, PA, the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, and the Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio. Her work has been shown throughout the USA and she has participated in art projects in Budapest, Hungary, and Batoufam, Cameroon.