April 19 - June 2, 2022

Elizabeth Leach Gallery is pleased to present Amanda Wojick’s Small Shields and Other Shapes featuring dynamic color gouache paintings and steel forms with paper material additions. Wojick’s practice intersects with sculpture, painting and collage and this new series of captivatingly indefinable shapes exemplify the progression of her abstract visual language.

Wojick creates multiple works concurrently in the studio pushing them to their material limits and reanimating them into new forms. Origami-inflected shapes made of thin steel connect with formal elements of intimately-sized gouache paintings and the artworks in both mediums emerge and shift like anthropomorphic objects. Imperfect circles, diamonds, and half-moons appear throughout the paintings and sculptures. Cut-out tabs extrude and peek open like tiny portals bursting from the solidity and their depth and shadows become part of the work. Tactile additions of torn paper fragments and crinkled mulberry paper enliven the surfaces in color palettes that range from rich, deep hues of cobalt blues and plums to vibrant yellows, and pastel pinks.

Amanda Wojick received an MFA from Bard College and from the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, and a BA from Colgate University. She has had recent exhibitions at Stene Projects (Stockholm, Sweden), Ucross Art Gallery (Sheridan, WY), Disjecta, (Portland, OR), and The Art Gym, (Marylhurst, OR). Past exhibitions include Gridspace, (Brooklyn, NY), Buffalo Arts Studio (Buffalo, NY), Portland Art Museum (Portland, OR), Tacoma Art Museum (Tacoma, WA), Susan Hobbs Gallery, (Toronto, Canada), Whatcom Museum (Bellingham, WA), Jordan Schnitzer Museum at the University of Oregon (Eugene, OR), and Sun Valley Center for the Arts (Ketchum, ID) among others. Her work is included in the permanent collection of Portland Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum and many private collections.