Temple in the Weeds – Christian Hamrick
July 5-27, 2024
Opening reception on Friday, July 5, 2024; 5:30p-9p
Artist programming TBA
All artworks are for sale in person or online. See the online gallery to purchase through the Bells Gallery website.
The Bells Gallery is excited to present Temple in the Weeds, a solo exhibition by artist Michael Christian Hamrick on view from July 5 – 27, 2024.
Michael Christian Hamrick has a big patch of weeds in the yard. He spends a lot of time there. Temple in the Weeds is a show about lying in those weeds. Hamrick has created a body of work revolving around his experiences laying around out in the weeds—capturing some of the sounds, sights, and colloquial observations that may occur both up close and far away, exploring the thoughts, sensations, and feelings found there; and rejoicing in the peace he discovered and the knowledge and vernacular of the weeds.
Temple in the Weeds recognizes neglected and unnoticed spaces that are just beyond the reach of our periphery and celebrates their nature as both sanctuary and voyeur vantage to the human experience.
ABOUT
The hospital in Eufaula, Alabama, stopped delivering babies a few years before he came along, so his folks drove on over to Cuthbert, Georgia. Michael Christian Hamrick was born there in July 1989. Shortly after, they drove on back to Eufaula, Alabama, where Hamrick and his seven brothers and sisters would spend their childhood. They had no TV when they were children, so Hamrick’s mother let them paint the floors and walls of their house. Once they grew up, he just kept on painting.
After studying Chemical Engineering at Auburn University, Hamrick began living and creating sculptures and paintings in an empty cotton shipping warehouse in Opelika, Alabama, intermittently hitchhiking through the United States. After a few years, he got in a $200 used car and drove straight to San Francisco, only stopping once (in the Mojave Desert when that car broke down). Hamrick found home living in a Robotic Burlesque theater while creating murals, paintings, and sculptures in and around San Francisco and the Bay Area, working in prop production studios, and taking on art projects for various entities venturing out to Burning Man.
Hamrick would go on to travel, paint, study, and exhibit in Paris, Stockholm, and Zurich, as well as parts of Central and South America, before landing in New York City. During his time in New York, Hamrick worked with internationally renowned theaters, filmmakers, architects, museums, and artists on collaborative projects, jobs, and exhibitions and maintained an active, prolific studio practice.
In August 2021, Hamrick returned to Eufaula, Alabama, where he currently lives, maintains his studio practice and gardens, and takes painting lessons from his 4-year-old.