October 22, 2009

Purdue Galleries presents 'Hard Rain' painting exhibit

"Four Figures"
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The exhibit presents a unique opportunity to share in a dialogue that connects issues of health and artistic expression, said Galleries director Craig Martin.

The Cancer Culture & Community program was developed by the Oncological Sciences Center in Discovery Park in partnership with Purdue's College of Liberal Arts. Its purpose is to "explore the human response to cancer as expressed through the arts and literature."

"Three Graces"
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Painter Mary Hambleton was diagnosed with advanced melanoma in June 2002. For more than six years, she defied the odds, living a full life. She mounted several one-person shows, taught, traveled and received a Guggenheim, two Pollock-Krasners, a Gottlieb and a Fellowship to Ballinglen Foundation in Ireland. She died Jan. 9, 2009.

Her work chronicled her journey of living with the disease, starting with the introduction of images of extinct species into her once abstract work and later images from the innumerable scans of her body. Hambleton never let her illness define her, but chose to define it instead by transforming it into art. As her own energy waned, she took the scans of the disease that would ultimately take her, and she turned those into striking and profound images.

In that sense, she had the last word, because her body of work is a living, poignant reminder of who she was, Martin said.

"I can imagine no better representation of the human response - the aesthetic response to cancer - than Mary Hambleton," he said. "Through the development of her later works, we can watch the emergence of an artist - an expressive human and medical patient - whose once purely abstract artworks became increasingly figurative and personal in an attempt to understand and express her experiences and seemingly to reconcile herself to the progressive onslaught of a disease that would eventually take her life."

Purdue Galleries will host a lecture by Hambleton's husband Ken Buhler at 6 p.m. Thursday (Oct. 29) in Stewart Center, Room 310. A reception will immediately follow the lecture in the Stewart Center Gallery.

The Stewart Center Gallery and the Robert L. Ringel Gallery - both managed by Purdue Galleries - are open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday; 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursdays; and 1-5 p.m. on Sundays. All exhibits organized by Purdue Galleries are free and open to the public.

For class and group visits, contact Mary Ann Anderson at Purdue Galleries at 765-496-7899.

For more information, visit https://www.purdue.edu/galleries.

Source: Craig Martin, 765-494-3061, cdmartin@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

PHOTO CAPTION:
Mary Hambleton, "Four Figures," 2006, collage, polymer, oil and alkyd on wood, 17 x 19 inches. (Photo contributed)

A publication-quality photo is available at https://www.purdue.edu/uns/images/+2009/galleries-hambleton.jpg  

PHOTO CAPTION:
Mary Hambleton, "Three Graces," 2008, oil, polymer, collage and tape on wood, 24 x 31.75 inches. (Photo contributed)

A publication-quality photo is available at https://www.purdue.edu/uns/images/+2009/galleries-hambleton2.jpg

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