CINCINNATI, OH.- This solo exhibition of over a dozen of Doug Navarra's drawings in gouache, graphite, and ink on antique found paper is one of six selected from among 165 proposals submitted for consideration for Manifest's tenth season.

Manifest showcases an intimate look at this award-winning veteran artists's recent work. Navarra's book-sized drawings are reminiscent of Christian and Islamic manuscripts, Indian Mughal painting, and perhaps Medieval cartography. With a nod to graphic design combined with a pinch of postmodern appropriation his works mesmerize, seeming purposeful and systematic, mysterious and whimsical, and at once vandalous and playful.

Of his work Navarra states: "I have always defined drawing as making marks on a surface, which leaves the door open for what is a mark and what is a drawing surface? In my case, I have chosen to work on old 'found paper' documents. Being more than 100 years old, I inherit a history of mark-making circumstance on these found documents in regards to stains, tears, smudges, folds, color of paper, design elements, stamps, gesture, and a narrative, just to name a few. It is a vocabulary of preordained aesthetics that I must react to, develop a relationship with, choose to enhance, delete, adopt, or obliterate, while imposing new layers from my own time and interval of space. In a sense, it becomes a metaphor for how we deal with our past and our collective history, whether we choose to ignore it, change it, embellish it, and/or bring its more important components into the light of day."

Doug Navarra received his BFA from Tyler School of Art in 1976 and an MFA from the University of Minnesota in 1979.

His awards as a visual artist include a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship (1980), a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (1985), two Pollock-Krasner Fellowships (1999 & 2012), and an Adolph Gottlieb Foundation Fellowship (2003). He has also been Visiting Artist at The Museum of Art and Design in NYC (2010). His work as been included in exhibits around the U.S. including OK Harris Gallery (New York City), Oktabec Gallery (Los Angeles), Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Arts and Design (New York City), among many others. His work is featured in the collections of Maine Artists' Space - The Danforth Collection, Los Angeles County Art Museum, Museum of Arts and Design in NYC, Muskegon Museum of Art, Rutgers University, Washington Square Partnership, and the Brooklyn Museum.

Navarra lives and works as a visual artist in upstate N.Y.