If a picture is worth a thousand words then Patrick Earl Hammie’s artwork would be considered a statement on gender and race. Starting Oct. 27 the University of Wyoming Visual Arts building will be hosting Hammie’s exhibit “Premortem” until Nov. 28. The artist will also be coming to the university Nov. 13 to talk about his exhibit. Hammie’s work is a take on the human identity and the expanding understanding of subjects like gender and race. The subjects of many of his pieces are on the nude human body and the dialogue the artist puts in with the body language. “I focus specifically on constructions of gender and race, putting pressure on these categories as a means of expanding understanding of identity,” Hammie told 365 Artists 365 Days Project website. “I investigate how male artists have imagined and visually formulated the nude figure in the history of Western art, and have spent the past several years using the pictorial traditions of the Old Masters, body language, and narrative to reconfigure inherited conceptions of ideal beauty and heroic nudity.” In some of his works he has even put himself in his art to symbolize his art idea of identity. The message of the work is to reexamine the human body and the way we acculturate it, and how we define beauty and the role gender and race play in it.“I wanted to expose the campus and community to an artist who works with large scale figurative drawing as both a unique process and product,” said Shelby Shadwell, an Assistant Professor. “One can see the history of the drawing process from beginning to end in each work as well as the interaction between descriptive and expressive mark making strategies. Charcoal is really just dirt, but Patrick has made the drawings transcend the medium to embody a sense of humanity in the subjects.” Through the Visiting Artist Endowment each one of the art departments are able to bring in a visiting artist each year thanks to an anonymous donor. Usually a gallery committee then makes the decision on who would work best for an exhibition due to the limited number of spots, said Shadwell. Patrick Earl Hammie has exhibited his work in galleries throughout the US and abroad including Ruchika’s Art Gallery in Panjim Goa, Kunst in der Carlshütte in Büdelsdorf Germany, the Painting Center in New York, and the Indianapolis Art Center. His work is also in several public collections including the Kohler Company, the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, and the William Benton Museum of Art.
