By Karen Parr-Moody
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – The coin-operated Automat machines of the 1950s were used to sell a variety of items – from sandwiches to pastries – but certainly not fine art. But a group of fine artists have gathered together in recent years to sell tiny works of art through them. Clarksville assemblage artists Miranda Herrick was one of those artists – almost.
“I created these little 2-inch square drawings,” she said. “But I loved so much I couldn’t bear sending them in.”
So she used the square to create one of the mosaic-style collage artworks currently on view at The FrameMaker, a frame shop at 705 N. Second Street in downtown Clarksville, where owner Glenn Edgin hosts an artist’s work each month.
For the FrameMaker show, entitled “Placement,” Herrick created collage artwork made out of photographs taken by Nashville artist Melanie Davis.
Herrick has created massive, quilt-sized works of art from tiny shapes cut out of aluminum cans, so she is accustomed to the painstaking style that can take months (such artworks have been exhibited at the Customs House Museum). But with her work for “Placement” she worked on a smaller scale.
“It really let me be playful, these things that were smaller,” she said.
Miranda Herrick has been creating assemblages out of found materials, from grocery bags to aluminum cans, for years./Karen Parr-Moody
Herrick also has a show on view at Space 69 in the Arcade in Nashville that solely features her aluminum can work. More information on this style can be found at http://hausrotations.com/reflective.
Herrick was inspired by the thrift of her grandparents and great-grandparents, who lived during the Great Depression, to recycle materials in her art. One of her early projects was a large “rag rug” she made from crocheting grocery bags.
“That sort of led me down the path,” she said.
She hopes that her pattern-based work – which sometimes looks Islamic in nature – can inspire the view to realize that the hundreds of shapes can represent how recycled materials can accumulate.
To learn more about Herrick’s work visit her website at www.mirandaherrick.com or call The FrameMaker at 931-64-8290 to see it in person.
Karen Parr-Moody began a career as a New York journalist, working as a fashion reporter for Women’s Wear Daily, a beauty editor for Young Miss and a beauty and fashion writer for both In Style and People magazines. Regionally, she has been a writer at The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper and currently writes about arts and culture for Nashville Arts magazine each month.