Collectage: Transcribing Oral Memory
Lynn Marshall-Linnemeier

Exhibition Dates: February 8 – March 10, 2007
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 8, 5:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Featuring live jazz from Emory Jazz Studies and fabulous food.
Gallery Talk: 6:00 - 6:30 p.m.

An online catalogue accompanying the exhibition will be available on February 15, 2007: http://visualarts.emory.edu/

Remembering China Sparrow by Lynn Marshall-Linnemeier, 1995; mixed-media

Dancer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham speaks of the “energy within” that forms once formal training has ended and the “pure strength” of the individual comes through. Once that strength is discovered an evolution begins and, as Dunham puts it, one moves on a “stream that is you but it’s even over and beyond you.”

Collectage: Transcribing Oral Memory examines the visual career of African-American visual artist Lynn Marshall-Linnemeier with paintings and mixed media works dating back to 1972. Also included are images from Stereo Propaganda: Deconstructing Stereotypes, Reconstructing Identity, her recent solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia. Collectage follows Marshall-Linnemeier’s streams, dreams, and imaginings with works that span her career and includes paintings completed by the artist when she was just seventeen years old.

Marshall-Linnemeier has a keen interest in people and cultures of color, especially their stories and she developed a formula early on for these examinations. Her “illuminated photographs,” a term that she coined in 1989 as a student at the Atlanta College of Art, are also included. The illuminated photographs were inspired by colors and form in Renaissance painting, as well The Sweet Flypaper of Life by Langston Hughes and Roy de Carava. They incorporate photography, painting, and stories to examine communities and the people within.

It is oral history that inspires much of Marshall-Linnemeier’s work and she has used oral history and stories as a means to inspire and transform individuals who would have otherwise been ignored. These individuals include those who have largely been dismissed by society and seen as incorrigibles because of their refusal to conform to society’s standards. It is here that her work becomes part anthropological.

About the Artist:

Lynn Marshall-Linnemeier uses photography along with cross-cultural mythology to examine and define human beings whose presence she finds compelling. Her images are distinguished by a lyrical approach to text as art and a knowing sense of color as a point of accentuation in altered photographic images. An honors graduate of the Atlanta College of Art and graduate of the University of Mississippi, Marshall-Linnemeier has received numerous awards including the Lyndhurst Foundation Young Career Prize, an NEA Fellowship, and a Northern Telecom New Works Fellowship. Her determination to study firsthand the cultures of people of color throughout the world has resulted in her securing fellowships from Lila Wallace/Reader’s Digest-Arts International that took her to Adelaide, South Australia and the first Fulton County (Georgia) International Residency in Balgowan, South Africa. Her work is held in numerous collections including the High Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Jackson-Hartsfield International Airport. A solo exhibition of her work was presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia in 2006.

This exhibition is supported in part by a generous grant from the Emory
University Founders Week Academic Festival Fund.

Gallery Hours
Monday - Friday, 9 am - 4 pm
Saturday, 12 noon - 4 pm

Visual Arts Gallery
Emory University
700 Peavine Creek Drive
Atlanta, GA 30322
Located on Emory's main campus, off Eagle Row (formerly Fraternity
Row), across from the baseball field.
Map, directions, and parking:
http://visualarts.emory.edu/contact/index.html

For more information, contact:
Mary Catherine Johnson
404.712.4390, mcjohn7@emory.edu