Exhibition: Spring 2018
Book: Published 2021
Daisy Patton’s expansive practice, marked by loss, fury and joy, is driven by information either embedded or implied in the source material she collects and mines from news stories and voracious reading. These found forms structure her research-based examination of the contours and workings of memory, expressed through painting, photography, drawing, embroidery, and interactive installations.Much of Patton’s work starts with photographs researched online or physical objects discarded to be sold, images quoted from her archive of family photos, and even scans of her own deteriorating brain. Lists of animals pegged for extinction in North and South America by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature provide a starting point for her meditation on the impact on our environment of forgetting species that are not known widely.
Patton’s color palette vacillates between warm and hot, taking cues from tropical flowers and the streetscapes of her hometown, Los Angeles. Her portfolio is characterized by an interplay of picture planes. A compositional logic is enacted through the interplay of the enlarged photograph, articulated line, veil of color, absence of paint, and, distinctively, her treatment of surface that is fence like, sometimes utilizing vegetal patterning.
Throughout her entire body of work, Patton constructs a visual metaphor for the mechanics of memory, its limits and the impact of these limitations. Her project is organized according to the artist’s commitment to resuscitating marginalized histories of people impacted by regressive, immoral practices: for instance, forced sterilization and the criminalization of abortion. As an emerging artist, Daisy has developed a distinctive style and way of seeing and working that facilitates contemplation and discussion in profoundly moving and relevant ways.
The designer of Patton’s book is Joshua Gamma. Gamma is a curator and designer based in Baltimore, Maryland. He has lived a nomadic life, first due to his father’s service in the U.S. Coast Guard—growing up primarily in Louisiana and Texas—and later, due to his own service in the U.S. Army. Gamma’s work lives at the crossroads of art, design, music, activism, history, and folklore. He sees his role as that of an ally, an amplifier, and a co-laborer with the artists and activists he works with. Joshua Gamma received his MFA in Curatorial Practice from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in the spring of 2019.
