For Aunt Peggy, 1945-2015 Painting

Nathaniel Wyrick is a 2014 graduate from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University MFA program and a co-founder of the Boston based Petrichor Performance Collective. He has exhibited and performed throughout the US and Europe, most notably at the Piano Craft Gallery (Boston, MA), Panoply Performance Laboratory (Brooklyn, NY), Mobius (Cambridge, MA), Pacific Northwest College of Art (Portland, OR), and the Tempting Failure Festival (London, England). He is the recipient of grants through the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture & the Boston Arts Commission, the New Center for Arts and Culture and Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and a Post Graduate Teaching Fellowship award from the SMFA. He is currently based in Asheville, NC, where he works as the Director of Admissions for Warren Wilson College and the MA program in Critical Craft Studies. Nathaniel’s work is autobiographical in nature, holding a twinge of longing for his southern roots. Much of his work is concerned with the exploration of identity, masculinity, and sexuality, especially in relation to memory, domesticity, and historical traditions of southern Americana. Through this lens, he examines the relationships he has established with people and site-specific locations. He approaches his creative practice as an opportunity to more deeply research and explore these interests. Nathaniel works with a range of mediums. Concentrating in performance, installation, and print work, he utilizes the use of objects to locate a history or placeness. Through this use of objects, he explores the connections between fragments of memory, image, and place. Much of his sculptural and performative work is a process of the creation or re-creation of this fragmented imagery; he thinks about color palettes, smells, sounds, and the seemingly choreographed task of a live action. All of this working together to trigger or create connections between the artist’s own personal history and that of the viewer. This approach has been guiding him in the creation of objects, prints, and/or performances that draw from a fraction of a much larger image or issue.