Artist to Know: Anna McNeary - Inside Art with Michael Rose
Wednesday, November 30, 2022
Artists who utilize multiple media to express themselves enrich all the fields they explore. For interdisciplinary artist and Providence resident Anna McNeary, the realms of printmaking, textiles, sculpture, and installation are all fair game. In her studio at The Wurks in the Valley Arts District, McNeary is creating exciting work that sets her apart from her contemporaries.
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McNeary completed her BA in Sociology from Smith College before going on to earn an MFA in Printmaking at RISD. She has shown her work widely and creates compelling objects ranging from individual prints, to quilts, to wallpaper, and more. The thread that ties them all together is McNeary’s probing vision. She pairs a love of various forms of craft with a mind that seeks to reshape her audience’s way of seeing.
Primarily a printmaker McNeary also frequently experiments with textiles. Speaking of the interdisciplinary nature of her work, she says, “I'm trained in printmaking, and I love the tactile quality of fabric. It allows me to work sculpturally and at a large scale with a fair amount of ease. Print and textiles have intersecting histories and applications. They also both centralize repetition and a certain kind of labor that is both hand-touched and semi-mechanical. In my work, screen printed textiles allow me to make meaning through pattern and merge objects and images. Textiles also bring a sense of warmth and playfulness into my work that I think would just manifest differently if I were working only on paper.”
Text is another major component of McNeary’s recent work. In one finished piece in her studio at The Wurks, she blends the words “Now” and “Never”, while in another on display in The Wurks large industrial gallery space, she allows for the word “Certainty” to dissolve in a visual cascade.
Explaining the way she uses text in her work, McNeary says, “I often use language as a visual motif that can represent ambivalent, vulnerable, or overpowering emotional experience. Literal patterns made from typography have become a way for me to talk about behavioral, social, and psychological patterns, both in relationships and in solitary inner life. I'm attracted to idioms and how the meanings of commonplace phrases, often taken for granted, can be imbued with newfound gravity when removed from context. Linguistic principles like semantic satiation (the meaninglessness that emerges when we repeat a familiar word aloud many times over) and iconicity (the ways in which type's stylistic properties create the effect of a written word) help me create emotional impact through text-based imagery.”
McNeary’s art is highly personal, but also allows for conversation with viewers. Describing what she hopes audiences will take away from experiencing her work, she states, “I'm interested in allowing a certain amount of flexibility into my work. I know what specific experiences inspired each project, but because the work is so reflective in nature, my hope is always that an audience will arrive at personal interpretations. For example, some of my recent work has been inspired by a process of second-guessing and reshaping personal beliefs as I age, but viewers arrive at this work with both personal and political reads. Right now, I think I'm using text in a kind of gentle confrontation, attempting to articulate sentiments to an audience that often feel too heavy to speak aloud. I hope viewers will find work like this a little dizzying, and somehow both solemn and playful.”
McNeary’s inquisitive bent lends itself to her role as an educator. She has a lengthy list of academic credentials and has worked with students at institutions like Brown, RISD, Wheaton College and UMass Boston as a Critic and Adjunct Instructor.
Asked how her mentorship of young artists impacts her own practice, McNeary says, “Teaching feels like constant collaboration. My students present me with puzzles and challenges that I might never contend with in my own practice, and they keep me engaged with concepts beyond the realm of my immediate work and experiences. Helping them refine and realize their visions is extremely creative work. Though teaching can be demanding, it's also humbling, and it prompts me to never take for granted our chosen pursuits as artists.”
McNeary’s work can currently be found in several venues including in an exciting and varied group show in the gallery at The Wurks. For details on visiting, viewers should follow The Wurks on Instagram at @thewurks. She also has a piece in Art League Rhode Island’s current exhibition Layer on Layer, on view in their gallery at 80 Fountain Street in Pawtucket through January 7. In 2023, she will be a resident at The Wedding Cake House from January 30 - February 8. With many exciting projects in store, McNeary is definitely an artist to watch.
Learn more about Anna McNeary at www.annamcneary.com.
