Madwoman in the Woods
A Series of Mixed-Media Collages by Tracie Noles-Ross
A series of mixed media collages by Tracie Noles-Ross exploring southerns narratives, embodied knowledge and the making of new stories. The series of works, Madwoman in the Woods is inspired by complicated southern narratives and landscapes.
Noles-Ross' method of making employs a range of techniques and materials to create objects and installations that reflect her observational studies of the natural world, and her place in that world. Using found objects and natural materials, she creates layered mixed media imagery, explores ideas about her personal history, the body in nature, the precariousness of human relationships to nature and each other withing the constructs of southern culture. Through the merging of mythology, ecology, and storytelling she examines how identity and personal narratives are defined by the land, history, and the mythic imagination. The scraping away and rearranging of materials in the recent work is an analogy for the process of defining ourselves through remembrances and the conscious and deliberate act of making new choices.
About the Artist Tracie Noles-Ross is a multidisciplinary visual storyteller living and working in Birmingham, Alabama. She became a member of the Ground Floor Contemporary Art collective in 2018 where she has shown in several exhibitions curated by artists such as Sara Garden Armstrong, Miriam Omura and Ty Smith. She was in a featured artist exhibition there with artists Ashley Wingo and Emily Rice. She became a member of the Alabama chapter of the Women’s Caucus for art in 2018 and in the summer of 2019 was selected for the ALWCA juried member exhibition Unbound at Lowe Mill. Noles-Ross was the featured artist of the 12th annual Moss Rock Arts Festival. She illustrated The Urban Bestiary: Encountering the Everyday Wild by award winning author and naturalist Lyanda Lynn Haupt published by Little, Brown. Works on permanent display in Birmingham, Alabama include Poustinia, a conceptual installation commissioned by and created for the Red Mountain Community School, Letters Home, a low relief sculpture displayed in the Regiment of Columns in the Alabama Veterans Memorial and Back to Nature, displayed at the Lister Hill Library on the campus of UAB, a public art project of the Alabama Psychological Association Foundation. Noles-Ross received an Award of Excellence from The University of Alabama at Birmingham Women’s Studies Program for curating Firsts: The Personal and the Historical, an exhibition honoring Women’s History Month. She is a recipient of an Artist’s Grant, from Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Snowmass, Colorado and a Regional Artists Project Grant from The Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans. Noles-Ross’ work was recently included in B18: Wiregrass Biennial, Wiregrass Museum of Art, Dothan, Alabama, and she is the 1st place winner of PaperWorkers Local’s second annual juried exhibition ‘Water of Alabama,’ a juried response to Marianne Nicholson’s Birmingham Museum of Art exhibition ‘Waterline,‘ Graham C. Boettcher, PhD, the R. Hugh Daniel Director of the Birmingham Museum of Art, juror. Her work Do Unto Others Downstream, a mixed media commentary on environmental conditions along a tributary of the Black Warrior River, earned her the honor of being featured in a one woman exhibition titled, Madwoman in the Woods at PaperWorkers Local in Birmingham in October of 2019.
Opening Reception Thursday, October 3rd, 2019 from 5:30-7:30. Open Saturdays from 11am-4pm. Closes November 2nd, 2019.
