NEW ORLEANS, LA.- Guided by its recast mission and the Newcomb College legacy of artistic experimentation, the Newcomb Art Museum presents two exhibitions for the start of 2016: Kate Clark: Mysterious Presence and Andrea Dezsö: I Wonder. On view January 20 through April 10, the exhibitions present work by two contemporary artists who challenge the divide between art and craft.

“Both exhibitions pay homage to the spirit of the Newcomb enterprise,” noted museum director Mónica Ramírez-Montagut. “The two artists revisit traditional crafts in new and unexpected ways for twenty-first century art audiences.” In turn, the shows’ titles—and their references to mystery and wonderment— emphasize the often enigmatic nature of such novelty.

Kate Clark uses the centuries-old craft of taxidermy to sculpt humanlike faces onto bestial forms. Her hybridized sculptures are at once familiar yet strange, insinuating primal similarities linking the animal kingdom and examining humans’ place within the natural world.

Her sculptures’ strong presence also ironically evokes a sort of absence, rendering the figures aloof and mysterious. Clark notes, “They seem to be looking at the viewer but their gaze goes beyond.” Nonetheless, Clark’s forms directly confront us, encouraging and challenging our willingness to accept difference.

Andrea Dezsö works at the intersection of art, design, and craft, revising traditional “female” applied arts and imbuing them with a feminist subtext. Her multi-dimensional ouevre includes embroidery, illustration, ceramics, Victorian Era-inspired carousel and pop-up books, drawings, and glass sculptures. Included in the exhibition will be a site-specific life-size tunnel book which the artist creates by stacking individually cut layers one in front of another.

Many of Dezsö’s works shed light on her childhood in Communist Romania where a stark physical existence stirred an expansion of her imagination. “I sometimes work with an imaginary landscape populated by a cast of imaginary characters,” she explains. Dezsö draws from dreams, anxieties, superstitions, and subconscious thoughts to create otherwordly works that are tender yet incisive and often irreverent.

Brooklyn-based Kate Clark (1972- ) holds a BFA from Cornell University and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has been included in solo and group exhibitions at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, The Islip Art Museum, the Mobile Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, the Musée de la Halle Saint Pierre, Paris, the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, and the Nevada Museum of Art, among other spaces. She has been awarded fellowships from the Jentel Artists Residency in Wyoming, The Fine Arts Work Center Residency in Provincetown, MA, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Program in New York. Clark was awarded a grant from The Virginia Groot Foundation in 2013 and a New York Foundation For the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship Award in 2014. Her sculptures are collected internationally and have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, New York Magazine, Art21:Blog, The Village Voice, PAPERmag, The Atlantic, Wallpaper, VICE, and many other publications. Kate was filmed by National Geographic in her studio over a two-month period for a short documentary about her work.

Born and raised in Communist Romania, Andrea Dezsö (1968- ) graduated from Budapest’s Hungarian University of Art & Design with a BFA in Graphic Design & Typography and an MFA in Visual Communication. Dezsö exhibits in museums and galleries around the world with twelve solo and more than twenty group shows since 2005. Her permanent public art has been installed in two New York City subway stations, at the United States Embassy in Bucharest, Romania and at CUNY BMCC Fiterman Hall in Lower Manhattan. Community Garden, Dezsö's mosaic in the New York City subway, was recognized as Best American Public Art in 2007 by Americans for the Arts. Other awards include a Kohler Arts/Industry Fellowship, an American Illustration Award, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. Dezsö is an Associate Professor of Art at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA and maintains studios in NYC and in Western Massachusetts. She is represented by the Nancy Margolis Gallery in New York and Pucker Gallery in Boston.