Nashville native Maggie Sanger always knew she wanted to be an artist, and in her family, artistic expression was encouraged. While studying her craft at Eckerd College in Florida, she spent time working in an art gallery and in a ceramic studio. She has been in the art design world ever since.
“When I graduated and moved back to Nashville, I began designing window displays and installations for local boutiques and commercial retail stores,” says Maggie. “Now I also style and stage homes and paint murals and accent walls, so it all has been evolving. The whole point is to really transform the space.
“What is it about you that you want to say? That can be anything from super funky to calming, whatever your style is and what you’re trying to convey.”
To get started, she encourages homeowners to pull inspiration photos from magazines and/or from online sources. She’ll also collaborate with interior designers or architects to ensure that the artwork will be cohesive with the space.
This month, Modfellows Art Gallery in Nashville will be exhibiting some of Maggie’s work in a new solo show called Shapes. The opening reception will be on Saturday, May 1 from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm and the show will run through May 29.
“When we opened the gallery in Nashville, our plan was to feature art we weren't seeing around town,” says Richard Modica, who owns Modfellows Art Gallery along with wife Julie. “Upon visiting Maggie's studio, we were immediately impressed by her execution, scale and style.”
“Rich was kind of the first person to encourage me to take my canvas work seriously,” says Maggie. “I’d been focusing on the retail and interior painting and installation side. He is super supportive and really encouraging.”
Shapes features large flat-shaped fiberboard cutouts. “I’m exploring a lot of things in this series, such as how we perceive the space around us, how we interact with the space around us, while dealing with perception and truth and reality. These are op art pieces, so it’s in a really playful way.
“I think we create our own reality as we move through space and experience it with our own unique lenses, so the cool part is what you perceive is up to you and it can be totally different than how someone else is experiencing the same piece, at the same exact time, in the same exact space. I think that is a really fun thing to create and witness at the show, when people have those light bulb moments, or it’s like yes, this is a flat piece but it looks three dimensional.”
“Everyone has a different reaction to art,” says Rich. “I feel that the unique factor in Maggie's work is scale, shape, color, and of course, her execution. Hard-edge paintings must be executed flawlessly to work; then the viewer can find refuge in a meditative space of form, color and line.”
Shapes, explains Maggie, is an exploration of her first solo show at Modfellows called Forms.
“Her first show was a big success and met with lots of enthusiasm and excitement for her work,” says Rich. “We find that her pieces always elicit a positive response from visitors to the gallery. We continually exhibit pieces of her works and they always draw attention.
“Normally, we would start an artist in a group show and then work up to a solo exhibit, but with Maggie, her work was so flawlessly executed and the scale demanded the whole gallery space. Plus, she embodies the type of artist we want to include in the Modfellows lineup - someone talented and passionate about their work.”
For more information about Shapes, go to https://www.modfellows.com/, and to find out more about Maggie or to commission a piece, go to https://www.maggiesanger.com/.
