Diorama

The Art Academy of Cincinnati is pleased to present Diorama, an installation by artist and AAC Education Administrator Maddy McFadden, made in response to her Daydreaming and Space-Making residency at the Contemporary Arts Center.

About the artist: Maddy McFadden is a loving aunt and Ohio-based multidisciplinary artist. She explores themes of isolation, connection, and power through sculpture, painting, and interior design, engaging with space as both a physical and philosophical concept. As Creative Director for a local magazine and Education Administrator at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, Maddy emphasizes community and collaboration in her work. She aims to use her art and life to bring people warmth and a sense of relatedness.

About the exhibition: The theme for Maddy’s CAC residency was “Daydreaming and Space-Making.” Her considerations of what happens when a space doesn’t love us back drove the response of crafting new space together and as a gift.

As part of the residency, Maddy engaged with community members in artmaking at the Downtown Main Library and the Contemporary Arts Center. They made individual and collaborative projects that embrace connection and adornment. Maddy and community members made art that unabashedly expresses one’s dreams, brings comfort, and explores what a dream “home” means, looks, and feels like.

Maddy’s exhibition Diorama responds to what she noticed through her residency by using reproductions of the art made by and with community members. She loved watching the excitement when people think of their dreams, learn a new skill or express a new discovery about themselves, and then make something comforting with others or to take home with them. Maddy prints images of their artwork on delicate fabric and sews the pieces together. She recreates their work in her exhibition to honor their art and artmaking as important and influential, just as works from Leonardo da Vinci, Keith Haring, and Vincent van Gogh are reproduced due to their prestige and fame. In the process of recreating, she notices each mark the artist made in their work and considers the dreams they are depicting. She puts them together to create a space of dreams, identities, comforts, favorite things, and hopefulness. She takes the theoretical space created during the process of artmaking and talking with community members and brings it to a physical space. Artmaking is important and so is its cause and effect of hope, comfort, space-making, and daydreaming.

The vibrant, original artwork made by community members will be on display at the Contemporary Art Center from January 13—24. Visitors can come see the exhibit on the sixth floor from 10 AM to 7 PM on Thursday and Friday and 10 AM to 4 PM on Saturday and Sunday. There is no cost.