PAST TENSE
Nicole Dyer, Jerrell Gibbs, Rachel Hayden
In the Gallery
Past Tense was a group show curated by Dave Eassa featuring works by Baltimore-based painters Nicole Dyer, Jerrell Gibbs, and Rachel Hayden.
The three artists deal with autobiographical narratives and mine memory, conversations, relationships, events, family artifacts, people, and places to build a visual language that works to analyze one’s self. Subleties within the days can become minutiae or larger critical junctures. Thoughts can get fleshed out immediately or sometimes saved for later. Making becomes an act of self-assessment, and a way of connecting to others through a storytelling. A look back is a move forward – in a way that feels like going around the same old track.
Rachel Hayden is a painter from Cincinnati who now lives and works in Baltimore. She graduated from MICA in 2015 and works as a Pre-K museum educator at the Walters Art Museum. In her work you will find fast cars and planes, checkers and flames, the moon in its phases, and other heavenly bodies.
Instagram: @rachelahayden
Nicole Dyer (b.1991) paints to preserve memories she seeks, creates, or stumbles upon. Through painting she is able to revisit and honor details of her experiences. Dyer graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2013 with a BFA in drawing. She has shown internationally in Ireland, as well as in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and LA. She is currently an artist in residence at The Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY.
Instagram: @steakbagel
Jerrell Gibbs is an artist and Creative Community Fellow of the National Arts Strategies. He examines his life story and that of family and friends in order to conceive and engage in the multilayered experience of the African-American diaspora. Exhibition highlights include: Art in the hands of Men at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, Painted Matters at CCBC, and Black Artists of DC: A Legacy of Excellence at Howard University. His work is in the permanent collection of the Harbor Bank of Maryland.
Instagram: @jerrellgibbs
This exhibition was organized by artist Dave Eassa, an artist and activist living and working in Baltimore, MD, alongside his solo exhibition “Stop and Smell the Roses.”
