In the taut and the lush, multimedia artist and graphic designer Madeleine Ignon explores the paradoxes of motherhood in her new exhibition at the Architectural Foundation Gallery in Santa Barbara (ASFB).
Borrowing its title from friend, artist, poet, and mother Kathleen Loe, the taut and the lush describes “two modes of being within the state and space of motherhood, and two ways of making marks.” Ignon created the pieces during her pregnancy and the first year and a half of her daughter’s life, a period of “the mundane and the miraculous, the ordinary and the life-changing.” Through painting, stitchery, and other multimedia techniques, Ignon conveys “the surreality, the emotional landscape, and the splitting of self that come with becoming a parent for the first time.”
Ignon has been awarded residencies at Starry Night Program in New Mexico, the Vermont Studio Center, Drop Forge & Tool in New York, and the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. With her work being exhibited nationally and internationally, she has been featured in LUM Art Magazine and Carpinteria Magazine. She currently teaches graphic design at Santa Barbara City College and art at UC Santa Barbara’s (UCSB’s) College of Creative Studies. A UCSB MFA graduate, Ignon is also one-half of the experimental curatorial collaborative Beta Epochs, and recently completed an 2023-24 residency at Taft Gardens and Nature Preserve in Ojai.
This exhibition will run from September 6 to November 1, with an opening reception on September 5, 5-7 p.m. Additionally, visitors will have the opportunity to hear Ignon talk about her work during an artist talk at the gallery on October 25, at 2 p.m. AFSB is located on 229 East Victoria Street. You can find Ignon’s work online at madeleineignon.com or on Instagram @madeveart.
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