Although its title might conjure the sights and sounds of crowded London Underground stations, Ruiz-Healy Art’s new exhibition “Minding the Gaps” is not an artistic exploration of railway safety. Rather than addressing the potentially life-threatening distances between subway platforms and train cars, the gaps to be mindful of here are substantially more conceptual in nature. Blurring the boundaries between figuration and abstraction, form and function, the two-person show examines domesticity, permutation and perception while pairing sculptural works by mixed-media artists Nate Cassie and Constance Lowe.
A New Jersey native who earned an MFA from UTSA and has exhibited at Artpace, the McNay and Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Cassie works between drawing, painting, sculpture, video and digital media. While his previous bodies of work have taken shape in abstract woodblock prints named after flowers, architectural birdhouses and etchings of spindly Texas trees, Cassie’s recent output falls within the realm of functional ceramics. While not immediately clear from their earthy finishes and organic imperfections, his almost ancient-looking jugs, cups and bottles reference hard-to-define “spaces in between” and the “gaps that distance surface from volume, skin and structure, formal and intuitive systems.”
Missouri-born Lowe earned an MFA from Western Michigan University, has shown at the Southwest School of Art and the Phoenix Art Museum and, like Cassie, is an alum of Artpace’s International Artist-in-Residence program. Although perhaps better known for geometric abstractions that fuse elements of photography and fiber art, Lowe also pushes her work into a sculptural realm with curious objects that suggest interventions on furniture or household decor. Whether combining calfskin, vinyl, felt, wood, mirrors or hardware, her three-dimensional pieces often draw inspiration from her family’s history of Midwestern farming. As for the “gaps” in question, they reveal themselves in the context of Lowe’s interest in “the abstraction of farmland as seen from the air” — and specifically the painterly photographs of the Earth captured by NASA’s Landsat satellite.