William Crawford + Marlene Frontera + Walter Price + Dan Schein + Jason Silva: PAPER PEDDLING

Marvin Gardens is pleased to present Paper Peddling, an exhibition displaying graphite on paper works by five artists. To a large degree the seeds of this exhibition were in seeing the work of these artists in separate contexts (mostly their studios) and noticing graphite as a possible common element in an otherwise quite disparate group.

Crawford and Silva work almost exclusively with graphite, but in very different ways. Silva deploys a range of densities of pencils as separate tools within a single image, while it is assumed that Crawford worked mainly with the standard ubiquitous #2 pencil. Graphite is the least common of Frontera’s materials. More frequently she uses color pencil, ink, markers, and a transfer process that - although it has painterly allusions - bears with it an insistence upon drawing by very the fact of the transfer. Price and Schein use graphite in varying degrees of study in preparation for paintings. Graphite also appears in their work at times as an element within mixed media works on paper, and perhaps most commonly as a tool within a separate free space of idea-wandering exploration.

Arriving at these five artists through the conduit of medium has the added perk of a group that was not likely to show together. And so indeed this is the first time they are peers in an exhibition.