Gallery Talk with Alex Waggoner

The Gibbes presents Habit Forming, Paintings by past Visiting Artist Alex Waggoner from June 18 – August 14, 2021, in the Ruth and Bill Baker Art Sales Gallery.

Join the artist for a tour of the exhibit; admission free and open to the public.

Habit Forming is a series of paintings that began to take shape as the jasmine bloomed, the scent making me immediately homesick for Charleston. I became more and more obsessed with the foliage around me. The wild habits formed by the jasmine vine or the man-made ones created by a landscaping crew’s hedge trimmer. I notice these natural and highly manicured habits in nature are similar to the habits I try to break and create in my life and studio practice. My daily studio practice is a combination of the natural ebb and flow of the process, something that is hard to force but easy to flow in, and my natural desire for control and structure, the hedge trimmers. These paintings are a visual exploration of musings about scents and sights that transport, and the spectrum of control seen in nature and mirrored in our habit forming. – Alex Waggoner