Megan Van Wagoner: Growing Dilemma
Judit Varga: Emergents
April 26 – July 25
355 Pod Space Gallery
Megan Van Wagoner: Growing Dilemma
“Growing Dilemma” considers the changing value placed on agricultural land and it’s products. Through the artifacts of it’s production Van Wagoner explores how we value the inputs and outputs of the land. Megan grew up in Ohio spending her weekends on dairy farms and amongst rolling fields of corn. Watching the landscape change as a response to changes in agricultural practices has made her consider our culture’s expectations for food production and land use. This is reflected in the sculptural objects created in the likeness of known artifacts and those that are artificial.
Born in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Megan Van Wagoner grew up in a community filled with artists, musicians and lots of mid-west practicality. After starting out in engineering, she majored in Ceramics at the Cleveland Institute of Art and completed an MFA in the Mount Royal School at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her focus on mixed media sculpture and installation, along with her background in ceramics, forms the foundation of her current studio practice.
Megan is the recipient of a 2009 Maryland Arts Council Individual Artist Award. She lives and works in the Washington, DC metro-area. Her studio is in Brentwood, Maryland.. She teaches art and design at Montgomery College in Takoma Park, Maryland. www.meganvanwagoner.com
Judit Varga: Emergents
“Finding the perfect balance between shape, color, surface and structure is always a challenge, an emotional struggle. The mere existence of this powerful energy makes it so appealing to me to work with clay. My work has a strong connection with nature and its organic structures which is built upon. My inspiration comes from small artifacts I collect on walks or trips with my family. These fragile imprints of nature provide me with rich visual vocabulary, endless shapes and colors. I work in the solitude in my studio and this peaceful loneliness gives me the perfect stage to working with clay. Sometimes in the silence there is moment of harmony when clay and I understand each other perfectly, both of us know exactly what the other one wants to do. These are the moments I long for and this longing draws me back in the studio to open up a new bag of clay and start again.”
Judit Varga is a native of Hungary. She studied Mathematics and Art in college before she went to the Moholy Nagy University of Arts and Design in Budapest where she received her MFA in Studio Ceramics and Art Education. Shortly after graduating in 1993 she moved to the US, raised two girls and eventually set up her ceramic studio in Maryland. The past 10 years, until 2020, she also worked as a professorial lecturer of ceramics at the George Washington University, in Washington, DC which gave her a great counterbalance for those lonely times in the studio. www.juditvarga.net