As the 2017 InLiquid Benefit approaches, we are excited to showcase the exclusive pieces to be sold at our silent auction. In preparation for our Main Event, we encourage collectors, both seasoned and new, to celebrate art, community, and their city while supporting their local arts organizations, such as InLiquid.
A lover of both material and the material-memories left by our beloveds, Sharyn O’mara’s Untitled (Trio) is one of an ongoing series of carbon burnout drawings on glass made with hair shed by the artist’s French shepherds. The series was inspired by the death of her dog, Ecco. When he was euthanized in 2006, O’mara gathered the small pile of hair that had been shaved from his leg in order to insert the needle. His hair—Left as the physical artifact of his existence containing his DNA—remains with his ashes on her nightstand. Years later, Sharyn began to gather hair from her current three dogs and reduced them down to carbon and ash by placing swatches of the hair down between sheets of heated glass. What remains is only its trace: carbon, ash, a hint of smoke from the burning.
Sharyn O’Mara is an artist and educator. A sculptor with an interdisciplinary studio practice that spans glass, installation, drawing, and digital works, the content of her work is derived from a deep interest in language, both written and spoken, and its inherent limitations. She explores loss and longing via the marks of language and the language of marks. Her work has been exhibited in the US and abroad and is in several public and private collections in the US. She is Associate Professor and Head of the Glass Program at Tyler School of Art of Temple University; previously, she taught at RISD and The Kansas City Art Institute. She lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her husband, daughter, and their three shepherds. In their scant free time, they foster and rescue shepherds in need resulting in an ever-evolving pack that fills their home with endless joy and an astounding amount of dog hair.
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