The Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) is pleased to present At the Evening Meal, the 2012 Collectors Club print by Aaron Collier. This 10 x 9 inch limited edition print of 250 was created exclusively for upper-level members of the CAC. The edition is a reproduction of a graphite drawing made with digital archival ink on hot press paper.

Born in West Virginia in 1979, Aaron Collier descends from a family with steep ties to the coal trade (“collier” can refer to a miner) and the Christian church. It was in church that Collier discovered a proclivity for drawing, filling entire service bulletins. He attended primary and secondary school in rural North Carolina and graduated from Presbyterian College, Clinton, SC, in 2001 with a B.A. in Art. Collier then obtained a Masters in Theological Studies from Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, FL, while simultaneously setting up a studio in the stuffy, windowless one-car garage of a friend. Collier and his wife Kristen moved to New Orleans in 2003 where he attended air-conditioned Tulane University, receiving an M.F.A. in 2005. They currently reside in New Orleans with their two children, and Collier teaches drawing and painting as a Professor of Practice at Tulane.

Represented locally by Cole Pratt Gallery, Collier has had solo exhibitions at Cole Pratt and Staple Goods Collective, an artist-run gallery space with studios in New Orleans’ St. Roch neighborhood. His work was presented in the group exhibition NOLA NOW, Part I: Swagger for a Lost Magnificence at the CAC (2011–12); donned the cover of New Orleans Review (2011); was featured in New American Paintings (2009); and can be found in permanent collections across the country, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, Iberia Bank, and the Boston Medical Center. In the summer of 2011, he was an artist-in-residence at the Ragdale Foundation outside of Chicago, IL.

Artist's Statement: “Since the summer of 2007, I have worked on a body of intimately scaled graphite drawings on paper that aim to posit ‘absence’ alongside ‘presence’ as an equally critical player in an image or narrative. What is left unpictured in the image becomes just as insistent as what gets recorded. Characters routinely inhabit the margins of the page where the entirety of the primary action is obscured or they are centrally positioned on the page without the safe comforts of context. The imagery beckons negotiation with what inhabits the field beyond the linear edge of the page and what isn’t present. My hope is that these drawings will incite the consideration of the emptiness (or fullness!) of the caesura and the potential inhabitability of negative space.”

Aaron Collier joins previous Collectors Club print artists Robert Tannen (‘11), Maxx Sizeler (’10), Skylar Fein (’09), Chris Jahncke (’08), Teresa Cole (’07), Debra Howell (’05), Raine Bedsole (’04), Joyce Harris Mayer (’03), Alan Gerson (’02), Luis Cruz Azaceta (’01), Wayne Amedee (’00), Cheryl Hayes (’99), Gerald Cannon (’98), Jan Gilbert (’97), B.F. Jonas (’96), Josephine Sacabo (’95), Doyle Gertjejensen (’94), Jacqueline Bishop (’93), Herbert Singleton (’92), Tina Girouard (’91), Robert Warrens (’90), Allison Stewart (’89), Sandra Russell Clark (’88), Douglas Bourgeois (’87), Richard Johnson (’86), George Dureau (’85), Patricia Whitty (’84), Emery Clark (’83), Robert Gordy (’82), and Ida Kohlmeyer (’81).

For more information on becoming a member of the CAC, call (504) 528-3805. Feel free to inquire about availability of past editions.