Archer Gallery presents Trait, an exhibition of artwork exploring aspects ranging from literary devices to genetic characteristics and traits of physical location.  Featuring both regional and national contemporary artists working in drawing, painting, sculpture, and digital mediums, Trait views fictional and physical worlds through work beginning with a single detail and developing into an exploration of larger implications.

Craig Drennen (Atlanta, Georgia) creates humorous and enthralling paintings inspired by Timon of Athens, widely regarded as Shakespeare's worst play. He explores abstraction and detailed realism within the same work, with his interest starting in the details of the book, pages, lists of characters, and arrangement of the play itself.

Lilla Locurto and Bill Outcault (Brooklyn, New York) take information gathered from 3D scanning of their own bodies and create digital photographs that are at times unrecognizable, but consistently compelling, interpretations of the figure.  The 3D scanner as a camera allows the subject to be surrounded entirely.  Works from thinskinned are compilations of multiple angles of the bodies, all visible from a single moment of time.

Jack Dingo Ryan (Eugene, Oregon) begins within the context of historical events and locations, exploring mysteries and intangibles of human experience.  Working in a variety of media, the initial point of Ryan's intrigue is used to construct and manipulate connected forms and ideas.  New works from the Threshold series use the Oregon coastline as the start for observation, exploration, and metaphorical interpretation of these times.

Ashley Sloan's (Portland, Oregon) drawings of hair are simultaneously haunting and striking.  With the figure removed, the audience focuses on a personal trait that is at once physical and genetic and also viewed as a manifestation of one's personality.  Her most recent pieces, inspired by Marie Antoinette, work to redefine and reclaim femininity in a third wave feminist culture.

Special thanks to the artists, Avantika Bawa, Jessica Bromer, Caitlin Schaap, Associated Students of Clark College, and the Clark College Art Department.

-Blake Shell, Archer Gallery Director