Mary Jane Parker: Overgrown

Mary Jane Parker: Overgrown

 

Exhibition Dates:                  May 2 – June 27, 2026
Opening Reception:             Saturday, May 2, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Gallery Location:                  432 Julia Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Hours:                                    Tuesday–Saturday, 10 am–5 pm
Contact Info:                         504.522.1999; arthurrogergallery.com

 

The Arthur Roger Gallery is pleased to present Overgrown, an exhibition of recent works on paper by Mary Jane Parker. This new body of work continues the artist's career-long exploration of fragility, compulsion, and ritual through a refined and intimate lens. The exhibition will be on view at 432 Julia Street from May 2 through June 27, 2026. The gallery will host an opening reception on Saturday, May 2, from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM with the artist in attendance.

 

In this new body of work, Parker draws on the visual language that has long defined her practice, objects that hold memory, including lace, plants, and everyday utilitarian forms, while bringing these elements into closer dialogue with the natural environment. Developed in part through observation of her backyard garden, the works suggest loosely constructed narratives, inviting viewers to consider the relationships between figure, object, and pattern.

 

Working with a reduced palette of materials: gouache and graphite on Yupo, Parker emphasizes restraint and precision. Many of the compositions balance dense, intricate patterning with open, unworked space. In these areas, the paper’s translucent surface remains visible, lending a delicate, skin-like quality to the figures and forms.

 

Parker’s process is intentionally slow and iterative. Repetition, accumulation, and subtle variation play a central role, resulting in images that feel both controlled and organic. Across the exhibition, recurring motifs of botanical forms, veils, and layered textures create a sense of continuity while allowing individual works to function as self-contained studies.

 

Overgrown builds on Parker’s ongoing interest in fragility, ritual, and the ways objects can carry personal and collective memory. The works resist fixed interpretation, instead offering a framework in which meaning emerges gradually through close looking.

 

Mary Jane Parker is a New Orleans-based artist. She earned a BFA from Louisiana State University and an MFA from Illinois State University with an emphasis in printmaking. She is currently the chairperson of the visual arts department at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA). Parker has received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant (2007), the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Independent Study Fellowship, NEA/Southern Arts Federation Award for Excellence in Works on Paper, Surdna Foundation Arts Teacher’s Fellowship, and Individual Artist Fellowships from the Louisiana Division of the Arts (1990, 2001)

 

Her work is included in the permanent collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the LSU Museum of Art, and the Center for Book Arts in New York and has shown at the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in New Orleans, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in North Carolina. Parker is a member of the Baton Rouge Gallery and is represented by the Arthur Roger Gallery. 

 

For additional information, images, or inquiries, please contact the gallery at 504.522.1999 or visit arthurrogergallery.com.