The Alabama Center for the Arts is pleased to announce its newest exhibit, Salamandrina, featuring the art of Gary Chapman. The exhibit will open in the Center’s Main Gallery on Tuesday, January 6. Additionally, a reception and gallery talk by Gary Chapman will be held on Thursday, February 5 at 5:00 pm in the ACA’s Main Gallery (Visual Arts Building).
Gary Chapman, Professor Emeritus of Painting and Drawing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, has an extensive career marked by more than 90 solo exhibitions at institutions across the country and numerous group and invitational shows nationally and internationally. A Joan Mitchell CALL Legacy Artist since 2013, he has received multiple major grants and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and two Individual Artist Fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts. His work has been widely reviewed and featured in over 20 publications, including four editions of New American Paintings, and 14 of his paintings are held in the permanent collections of ten southeastern museums as well as many corporate and private collections nationwide.
Salamandrina is inspired by Chapman’s late daughter, Sadie, who was born with a severe heart defect, Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, requiring surgeries at 9 months and again at age 8. As a young adult, her heart began to fail, and she received a heart transplant at 19. In March 2023, her heart failed again, and she died of organ failure at age 26.
SALAMANDRINA is the first painting where the salamander is used as a symbolic reference to Sadie. Almost every subsequent painting of or about Sadie includes at least one salamander representing the hope of Sadie’s survival in the fire caused by her heart defect, in anticipation of scientists developing the technology to regenerate organs, alleviating the need for a heart transplant and the threat of potential rejection.
A few years before Sadie was born, the German industrial band Einsturzende Neu Bauten produced the song Salamandrina, based on the ancient myth of the salamander. This later took on meaning for the family as metaphor for Sadie.
Salamandrina will close on Thursday, February 19. The Alabama Center for the Arts is open Monday through Thursday from 8:00 am – 8:00 pm and on Friday from 8:00 am – 12:00 pm.