My work communicates an ambiguous tension between viewer and the environment. Reflecting on the world I see and exist in, there is a visual potency in translating organic experiences and environments. As I create these dialogues, I allow for internal considerations between the realm of reality and fantasy, distorting and highlighting the interpretation within the visual elements. Composed of symbol driven narratives that focus on various aspects of connection and communication, I cultivate various scenarios within my work to assist in the engagement of dialogue between story and viewer. I often explore the power of juxtaposition through the ebb and flow of shape versus form.
I participate in scholarship-based discovery through research focused residencies, exhibitions and collaborations. My solo and small group exhibitions most often focus on the conclusions made during my scholarship research time.
Come From Away (2018) was a solo exhibition highlighting various traditional and experimental marking processes practiced during my trips to the Maritime Provinces. A multimedia project To Receive and Release (2016-2020) was a video uploaded to YouTube showcasing a reclaimed book of drawings, videos, sound marking and poems created over a four-year period further reflecting on my Canadian travels. Earthbound Riddles (2020) was a show dedicated to the intimate exchange with the landscape visited and inhabited. The partnering artist, Anne Dovali and I, combined organic materials, forms and ideas with industrially manufactured studio supplies to recreate, remember and better understand the relationship to the experienced spaces.
My current drawing research shifted thematically during my time at the Athena Standard Residency in Athens, Greece Summer of 2021. These studies and drawings produced were inspired by the Greek sculptures and spiritual relics made available to view in the Greek museums and historical sites. During my time in Greece, I was most interested in the spiritual story, history and personal power of votives and epiphany statues. Votives and epiphany statues were the manifestations of the devotee and the spiritual being. The power held in these spiritual structures during the ancient times and how the presence of “their” essence is conveyed today. Time factors into this idea of ancient presence reimagined over centuries. The end of 2021, I collaborated with fellow residency artist, Lauren Woods of Auburn University to compose music for her performance Circle/Cycle (2021). A solo drawing exhibition, Presence (2022), showcased the drawings in February of 2022 at The Burkholder Project’s Outback Gallery in Lincoln, NE. A continuation of this body of work and collaboration efforts with Lauren Woods will be exhibited together this fall at Spring Hill College’s Eichold Gallery in Mobile, Alabama.
Overall, my art is an exploration of shape, color and various mark making methods through traditional, contemporary and experimental visualizations. I am interested in how far I can push the concept of what is a drawing or painting and what constitutes, “a mark.” I translate my visual experiences as a narrative agent producing a lyrical movement and allowing dialogue between the elements and principles of design to interact within my various compositions.
ERIN MALIA CROSS: ARTIST + CURATOR + CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVER 