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Outside-In PACIA SALLOMI & ALEXANDRA ACKERMAN
January 12, 2019 - March 2, 2019
LOCATED IN THE COMMUNITY GALLERY (Street level)
Artist Statement: Pacia Sallomi
I began this series in 2010. In the beginning, I was focused on roundabouts or in French,
rond-point, which came about because of an experience of being lost on back roads and small villages
in the French countryside. I had begun to think about the way we structure the experience of getting
from one place to another. The circular pathways of a roundabout are quite different cultural
modalities of disorientation and reorientation than the typical grid-like intersection controlled by a
stoplight. I begin the painting with an aerial diagram of a place. It became evident very quickly that
painting into these diagrams is interior process that is ritualistic, connected to healing and
contemplative practices found in many indigenous cultures such as the sand painting by Native
American shamans, Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime stories and the mandalas created by Buddhist
monks. The search for understanding these themes has led me to visit an Aboriginal community in
Australia, a Vietnamese Buddhist monastery in France, Celtic stone alignments in England and France,
and Shinto shrines and monasteries in Japan.
These paintings are always orientated around a centering point, but they are not always based
on roundabouts. The diagrams have included gathering places such as a Roman Coliseum in Arles
and Burning Man in Nevada; complex freeway interchanges in Los Angles or towns that are built
over ancient circular sites such as in Avebury, England. These marks on the earth tell us about our
culture, our times and ourselves. The paintings are always square, representing the nature of Four as
a symbol of stability, points on a compass and reference to the mandala. They contain the circle as a
symbol of completion and of the cyclical nature of life.
Biography: Pacia Sallomi
Pacia Sallomi’s path to and through the arts has been a circuitous one. The daughter of
an Obstetrician and a painter turned poet, her education in the arts began as a child. During their
three years living in Bavaria, the family camped their way through Europe, visiting many of the
great museums and then settling in California in the mid-1960’s. These experiences instilled a
love of art and of nature. After completing her undergraduate work in Nutrition at the University
of California, Davis, she moved to Colorado, and then New Mexico, where she worked as a
homebirth midwife in the 80’s and early 90’s. During that time she received an MA in Art
Education at the University of New Mexico, while also studying Photography, Japanese porcelain
techniques and took her first painting class from Martin Facey who introduced her to the spiritual
inquiry of color. She received her MFA in Studio Art from Texas Tech University in 1997 and is a
professor at Carroll University in Wisconsin where she has been teaching painting and drawing
for the past twenty years.
Pacia’s paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally in over 120
exhibitions. She has attended a number of international artist residencies and loves travel.
During a residency in France, 2003, she created a collaborative book, Shield/Le Bouclier, (Pacia’s
paintings and her mother’s poetry) that was published in 2007 as a bilingual, limited-edition
artist’s book. The French translation is by Gallimard poet-translator of Emily Dickinson, Claire
Malroux. Pacia’s own work often includes the written word and she is currently studying
Japanese Brush Calligraphy.
Artist Statement: Alexandra Ackerman
In this group of paintings I began to explore color, pattern and form in response to my visceral experience of the landscape of Baja California Sur during March of 2018. The things I found most visually stunning in Mexico were the cacti (life springing from what appears to be nothing), the ocean (both calming and frightening) and the brightly painted walls and buildings everywhere we traveled. Working from memory I am intuitively combining the natural forms with the manmade bright colors.
My creative process involves layering washes of watercolor pigment to build up fantastic landscapes which convey the juxtaposition of an otherworldly desert and vast ocean, even letting them bleed together. In these worlds I invent hybrid plants or creatures that are neither of land or sea, but uniquely their own. I’m curious about the mysterious inner life of plants as well as the observable aspects of the diverse variety of life in each new environment I encounter, asking such questions as: How do plants communicate? What is the sound of a plant growing? Why do they seem to have distinct personalities? My visual responses range from fairly recognizable to completely abstract organic forms. The challenge in each painting is to find a balance of both harmony of color and tension in composition. I hope to return to Mexico and continue to travel to new places in search of common and uncommon life, as it always stimulates my growth as an artist and human being.
Biography: Alexandra Ackerman
Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Alexandra Ackerman grew up a keen observer of the natural world from a young age. She first learned to paint in the wet-on-wet watercolor style at the Waldorf School at age eight, and has continued her exploration until the present, maintaining a childlike freedom in her work. Alexandra has found beauty in the places she has lived and worked including the shores of the Great Lakes, New England vegetable farms and Minnesota flower gardens. Inspired by the vast diversity of plant life, she uses luminous color and pattern to create dynamic landscapes and biomorphic abstractions. Her paintings are intimate meditations on her physical surroundings, expressions of the pure joy and wonder of watching things grow. Focusing on the ethereal aspects of nature, her forms are evocative of leaves, seeds, eggs, sprouts, wind, and waves.
Alexandra began her studies at the Art Institute of Chicago and ultimately earned a degree in painting and printmaking at Massachusetts College of Art, where she explored a variety of mediums, often incorporating fabric and found objects into her work. She was part of the Minneapolis art and music community for nearly a decade before moving to northern Wisconsin. Alexandra now lives with her husband and two children in Iowa City, working out of her studio downtown. She has painted commissions for individual collectors and public spaces and has taught watercolor workshops locally. She has participated in numerous group and solo shows across the country, and has a variety work for sale at Prairie Lights Bookstore. Her work was recently on display at the Iowa State Capitol in the Governor’s office.
