"The Rogers-Green House is undoubtedly one of Laurel’s most striking buildings. How I would have liked to meet Lauren Rogers! His early death was a tragedy, but his spirit inspires this house and the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art’s extensive collection.
The building’s sense of space is captured here by the doors and windows that allow air and light to move through the house. What a lovely place for gatherings! A sense of intrigue arises from not knowing what lies around the corner, down the hallway, or atop the stairs.
Swimming Carp, no. 51.86 inspired this design, the beginning of the creation of the Magical Landscapes series. Bringing the outdoors inside, while allowing the indoor space to expand outdoors, creates a sense of playfulness and intrigue, exhibited by the color juxtaposition of the carp (reimagined as koi) with the black rendering of the Laurel architectural detail. The flowers and floating vegetation in the water travel beyond their assigned space out the windows and onto the border of this painting." -rds
Magical Landscapes:
An Artist’s Fusion of Japanese Ukiyo-e Prints and Laurel’s Architectural Heritage
Paintings by René Shoemaker
Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, MS, USA
"Athens, Georgia artist René Shoemaker explores the way spaces work together and how people inhabit and interact with their environment. For her exhibition at Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, she is investigating both the architecture of Laurel, Mississippi, and the Museum’s collection of Japanese woodblock prints to produce paintings on silk. Inspired by the Japanese aesthetic and representation of objects, patterns and colors, her compositions respond to the designs that are engraved onto the woodblock prints, and incorporate scenes from the Lauren Rogers Museum buildings and the intriguing architecture of Laurel itself. Bringing together these two artistic movements that are separated in space and time, the artist creates a magical landscape that communicates with a new language of images. Shoemaker’s paintings are comparable in size to the prints in the collection, and they will be hung side-by-side in this exhibition."
-Kristen Miller Zohn, curator
