Dharma Strasser MacColl
Surfacing
ricepaper, watercolor, silk string
17 x 31 inches
2005

Dharma Strasser MacColl
Still Current
ricepaper, watercolor, silk string
16 x 43 inches
2005

Dharma Strasser MacColl
Still Current (detail)
ricepaper, watercolor, silk string
16 x 43 inches
2005

Statement
The spacial questions of cohabitation have always interested me: how individuals live so closely while adhering to their particular habits, and what tension and cohesion arise from this proximity. The question has become pronounced by a recent move from the city to semi-rural life, where the contrast between high-rise and meadow becomes ever sharper. I think of it as a migration, of sorts, and it has necessitated a new set of materials and a clearer understanding of the density of both our man made and natural world. My materials and methods are a result of constant experimentation in the studio and a conscious desire to combine the unexpected: paper with clay, feather with glue, thread with mylar. Labor is an important component, as the slow, intensive process of hand making the pieces is an opportunity to focus on small, intimate experiences often lost in our frenetic world. What emerges is a play between the multiplying, overlapping grouping of parts and the open spaces around them. The combining of pieces, while slowly executed, is always about parts moving together and finding their order in a wide-open space.

Bio
Dharma Strasser MacColl was born in 1971 in San Francisco, California. She studied at the Lorenzo de Medici in Florence Italy, and received a BFA at Beloit College in 1993. In 1997, she completed an MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Strasser MacColl had solo shows at the Augen Gallery and the Bona Keane Gallery, in Portland, OR, as well as the Nancy Margolis Gallery in New York, NY. Her work has been included in group shows at the Cranbrook Art Museum, the Margolis Gallery in NYC and at CCA in San Francisco. She was awarded the 2004 Individual Artist Grant from the Marin Arts Council. Strasser MacColl lives and works in Mill Valley, California.