: February 13, 2010 through March 6, 2010 :
This series takes advantage of framing iconic imagery using contemporary post-modern cultural materials. Innuendo, metaphor, and meaning are rife. However this differs for each individual observer who is left to discover their own personal meaning within the series. I am passionate about working with found objects and putting them together in provocative ways. This series is a blend of a hierarchy of saints and an amalgam of sound – “for amusement only”.
-Ray Palmer 2009
I come alive inside the process of working with textural materials. This series revolves around incorporating used pieces of sandpaper into my work. I am always drawn to use found objects from along the sides of roads. They have acquired a patina all their own that I see as beautiful. I hope to create something that will draw the observer in through the use of detritus and my own intentional marks.
-Cindi Palmer
Ray Palmer grew up in Southern California assimilating much of the psychoemotional cultural landscape that was Los Angeles during the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. In search of his fortune, he left a master degree program in psychology and a job as a nurse to join a band who toured with Wild Cherry and Black Oak Arkansas. When the act inevitably dissolved there was nothing else to do but get back into graduate school where he enrolled at UCLA film score program for two years and then earned a Ph.D. in Preventive Medicine from USC. Moving to San Antonio in 1995 he continues to cultivate his interests in blending abstract performance and visual arts. He has been working in found object assemblage art for over 10 years. Ray is currently an associate professor at University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, founder of the San Antonio ambient-post sonic group Crib Chimp, and runs High Wire Art Gallery with wife Cindy, son Dylan, and daughter Chloe.
Cindy Palmer was born in Milwaukee Wisconsin but grew up in Southern California. Her B.A. is in theatre from Cal Poly Pomona where she focused on set design and props. She has held down various jobs such as health food store manager and library clerk at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena. The activities that would excite her the most always revolved around some kind of design element. This wouldn’t become dominant in her life until after starting a family and running the household as her main focus. What launched her into the art world was a post card she saw at the restaurant Beto’s in San Antonio. It read get up off the couch and paint. And so she did.
Cindy Palmer began abstract painting in 2004. She studied under Alberto Mijangos for three years. She has had a one woman show at Salon Mijangos in the spring of 2007 and the JumpStart in the Blue Star complex in 2008. She has also shown with Jorge Garza at Galeria Ortiz in the summer of 2009.
Cindy’s greatest influences have been from mentoring under Missi Smith and Alberto Mijangos. Other artists that inspire her are Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.
Cindy currently has acquired a space that has been turned into a gallery called High Wire Arts where an art walk occurs on the second Friday of every month. Cindy regards painting as the challenge of expressing complexity and simplicity at the same time.