Exhibitions: September
September 3-October 4, 2002
D.R. Wagner: Miniature Tapestry Masterworks-The Niagara Series
Reception: Friday, September 13, 7-9 p.m.
Artist’s Talk: Friday, September 13, 7:30 p.m.

To see a tapestry by D.R. Wagner is to experience an artwork that is multisensorial. The viewer is witness to a colorfully charged scene with dreamlike figures in a mythic landscape. Poetic words integrate acute ideas referencing Wagner’s complex thoughts. Through the use of colorful and metallic thread, daring composition, and expert craftsmanship D.R. Wagner creates intense worlds that are often the size of a postcard. These intimate realms activate the viewer’s audible senses for the works are rhythmic. They have tempo and use visual crescendo, embodying in tactile form the artist’s skill as a musician.

The Niagara Series of work evolves from the artist’s birthplace, Niagara Falls, NY. Wagner’s personal narrative supplies the content for these images. Frequently, Wagner redresses a single theme in a series of images changing color schemes, incorporating symbol-like imagery, or detailing a work with light-reactive Balger filament. The result is a body of miniature tapestries that is complex in inception and exciting in presentation due solely D.R. Wagner’s focused and inspired creation. The Pence Gallery will feature approximately 30 pieces of Wagner’s with 15 from the Niagara Series and 15 selections from private collections.

Miniature Tapestry Masterworks is the first in a series of four exhibitions presenting the work of this prolific artist. Additional coordinated venues on the campus of U.C. Davis will feature light-reactive tapestries and rugs, poetry and publications, and a retrospective of D.R. Wagner’s work from the last
thirty years. These venues include the Memorial Union Gallery, The Design Museum and Shields Library and will be on view during the month of October.

* Musical performance: September 13, 8:00 p.m. D.R. Wagner and his band “R Spoon” will perform a lively rendition of familiar and original tunes. R Spoon also features Les Haber, Eva Mae Nicholson, Larry Luis Ortez, and Gabrielle Wagner.