The Art of Marjorie Alexander

For Marjorie art is a means of communicating her secret perceptions, sometimes emerging as recognizable images, more often as unidentifiable forms functioning as visual spiritual symbols.  The sources for these perceptions are many and varied. Some express an interaction with personal symbols drawn deep from the subconscious, and some emerge mysteriously from the wellspring of conscious daily experience. Then there are some that emerge formally as the work develops.

Birds and bird forms are frequently found in Marjorie’s work.  She is especially fond of the pigeon and the crow, both of which interact with the human element in a most mysterious and astonishing manner.  Crows and ravens have been part of human evolution from early cave art to contemporary references in religion, literature, poetry, art, and music.  It has been confirmed that this basic historic interaction has subtly molded both crows and people.

Since 1999 she has been interested in using paper for large installations as well as gallery pieces. The two installations, “Ghosts of the Clearcut”, exhibited at the Catherine G. Murphy Gallery, College of St. Catherine, St. Paul, MN, 1998, and “Forest Presence,” exhibited at the Robert C. Williams American Museum of Papermaking, Atlanta, GA., 2001, had significant concern for the environment.

In 2000, the installation “Four and Twenty Blackbirds” was commissioned by the Leopold-Hoesch Museum, Düren, Germany.  It has since been exhibited in the Museum der Stadt, Deggendorf, Germany, 2001 and Geneva, Switzerland, 2001.  In 2001-2 it was exhibited at the Harsfield International Airport, Atlanta, Ga., and in a juried show at the Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN in 2003.  In 2007 it was again shown at the Palos Verdes Art Center, Palos Verdes, California.

Another installation, “Mantle of Peace” was shown first at the Santa Maria Della Scala, Comune de Siena, Italy in 2003, and purchased for permanent exhibt in 2005 by the Museum “Louvre It or Leave It” in Minneapolis, MN.

The installation, “Clearcut II,” was exhibited in 2006 at Papiermacher Museum, Steyrermuhl, Austria, and in 2007 the installation, “Crows, Paper, and Ink” was exhibited at the Palos Verdes Art Center, Palos Verdes, California.

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