In All About Alice, artist Stephen Paul Day beckons from the proverbial rabbit hole. Ever the aficionado of evolving contexts and cultural palimpsest, Day’s ninth solo exhibition at the Arthur Roger Gallery is no mere effort to re-illustrate Lewis Carroll’s classic, but rather an exercise in cultivating a tangible atmosphere of self-discovery. With absurdity as his anchor, Day rappels into the realm of the transitional and the enchanted, a place flickering somewhere between New Orleans and Goya’s Sleep of Reason.
Day’s interdisciplinary approach lends itself well to such flights of fancy; the exhibition is replete with a crystal palace and very large white rabbits, but, as suggested by the title of the exhibition, Alice remains our point of center. Alice is refracted and reflected. Alice rolls the dice. Alice undergoes mitosis. Alice is realized in a number of mediums, including bronze, beautifully executed cast-glass, and–in a twist of Neo-Romantic irony–she is finally realized in the audience itself. Here, We Are All Alice.
Stephen Paul Day was born in 1954. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Louisiana State University in 1977 and then attended the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Paris where he received a Diplôme Technique in lithography, intaglio, and stained glass in 1980. In 1984, Day earned his Master of Fine Arts in sculpture and glass at Louisiana State University where he also studied video. In 1985, he was awarded a residency at the Experimental Glass Workshop in New York City. In 1988, he was invited to help develop a visionary new summer academy in Frauenau, Germany where he remains an instructor and advisor of the school to the present day. In 1990, he received an Emerging Artist Award from the Pilchuck Glass School, where he later taught for years alongside German glass artist Erwin Eisch. Day has received many other prestigious awards, including a Pollock-Krasner Grant; a Médaille de Bronze for the Salon du 14eme Arrondissement, Paris, France; and a career grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation for an installation exhibited during the 2008 Prospect.1 Biennial in New Orleans. Day has exhibited in the United States as well as internationally, and his work is in many collections, including the New Orleans Museum of Art; the Corning Museum of Glass, New York; the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, Quebec, Canada; the Kunokube Glass Museum, Nagahama, Japan; and the Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Stephen Paul Day lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Berlin, Germany.
