Aaron McNamee

Aaron McNamee (b. 1977) and raised in rural Northeastern Oregon without electricity or running water for the first six years of his life. After adjusting to the commodities (including indoor plumbing) and rituals of the modern world, he spent time skateboarding, snowboarding, traveling and art making. Concentrating on sculpture, he earned a BA from Eastern Oregon University in 2004. Intrigued and seduced by the Wild-West lifestyle of post-Katrina New Orleans, Aaron pursued his graduate work with an assistantship at Tulane University followed by one at University of New Orleans where he earned his MFA in 2010.  He continues to live in New Orleans and serves as an Artist in Residence at the University of New Orleans where he teaches sculpture and drawing. Working with themes of time and media, McNamee has meticulously laminated the daily newspaper into complete one-year cycles in what critic D. Eric Bookhardt writes “subverts the processes of mechanical media… The news and its media are ephemeral, yet here pages that once held all that was weighty in the world are congealed into dead weight and reduced to inert blocks of abandoned information in a weird entombment.” McNamee has exhibited his artwork throughout the United States and in Europe. His work appears in public and private collections including the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation and Eastern Oregon University and has been reviewed in Artforum among other publications. He is a member of Good Children Gallery (New Orleans, LA) and is represented by Boyd Satellite Gallery (New Orleans, LA).