PRESS RELEASE
The exhibition title, The Glue Factory, refers to the production methods Powers employs. The artist develops his creamy-surfaced paintings from a mix incorporating artist’s pigments and Elmer’s glue. Powers has carefully studied the properties of this water soluble material, and considers it a durable living surface.
Powers’ compositions are influenced by earlier generations of artists such as Jackson Pollock, Brice Marden, and Ross Bleckner. Like these artists, his interest is in line and how a line can be drawn. Employing graphite, or hair pulled through the multiple layers and surfaces of his glue paintings, motion is created.
Jerome Powers is exploring and stretching acceptable methods and materials for making art. It is important to the artist that he uses organic materials to make his works. He uses horse or human hair stretched or curved to loop lines across and through his paintings. The hair comes from a variety of sources. Friends and relatives supply their freshly cut hair. Horse hair is procured from collectors who ride or train horses, and save the combed tails of their favorite Chestnuts or Palominos.