Trisha Orr

Artist, poet's wife, muse, and so much more.

Trisha Orr attended Sarah Lawrence College, the New York Studio School, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the University of Michigan, from which she graduated summa cum laude. She has received individual artist fellowships from the NEA (mid Atlantic Regional) and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Her solo exhibits have been reviewed in Art in America and The New York Times. Her work has been included in numerous group and museum shows nationally, been featured twice in New American Painting, profiled in American Artist Magazine, and presented in portfolios in the literary magazines Meridian and Georgia Review.



Trisha Orr is primarily a painter of realist still lifes. Her poem-paintings take the poems of her husband, the poet Gregory Orr, as their subject, and are a departure for her. They were first generated in response to an invitation to collaborate with him for an exhibit titled "Love Letter Invitational"—a show in which visual artists were asked to work with writers and poets on the subject of “love.” Trisha Orr said, “I tried to find equivalents in color and space and light for the emotions that I experience when I read each of the poems I chose to paint.” Her challenge was to create visual responses to Orr’s poems in which the text of each poem was legible, but with the final result being a painting in its own right, not just a poster of the poem.

TRISHA ORR
born: Paterson, New Jersey, 1951




EDUCATION:
New York Studio School (1976-78)
University of Michigan (B.A. summa cum laude, 1974)
Rhode Island School of Design (1971-72)
Sarah Lawrence College (1969-1971)
Art Student's League, NYC (1965-69)




AWARDS:
1997 Goya Girl Press, Inaugural Print Competition.
1994 MidAtlantic/NEA Regional Fellowship in Painting.
Individual Artists Project Grant, Virginia Commission for the Arts.
Juror's Award, "Select: A Regional Show", Sawhill Gallery, James Madison University
1974 Phi Beta Kappa Society, University of Michigan




SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2006 Les Yeux du Monde, Charlottesville, VA, "Visions of Eden" (reviewed in ART PAPERS)
2003 Les Yeux du Monde, Charlottesville, VA, "Eurydice Paintings"
2001 Piedmont Virginia Community College, "This Dazzling Cosmos, This Dazzling Chaos”




2000 Jack Meier Gallery, Houston
University of Virginia Art Museum, “Lyric Conjunctions” collaboration with poet Gregory Orr.
1998 Lizan Tops Gallery, Easthampton, New York (reviewed in the NY Times)
Peninsula Fine Arts Center, Newport News, Va.
1997 Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, Virginia
1996 Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery, New York.



1995 Fayerweather Gallery, University of Virginia, (two person)
Main Street Gallery, Nantucket, Massachusetts
1994 Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery, New York (reviewed in Art in America)
1993 Parkersburg Art Center, Parkersburg, West Va.



1986 Piedmont Virginia Community College, Charlottesville, Va
1985, 1987 James Hunt Barker Gallery, Nantucket, Mass.
1976 Ceres Street Gallery, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.



SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
2006 “Love Letter Invitational”, Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville
2004 "Study", Roebling Hall Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, curated by James Hyde
2003 "Vulnerability", New York Studio School, curated by Bill Jenkins



2001 "Representing Representation V", Arnot Museum, Elmira NY
2000 "The Image as Text", Sawhill Gallery, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Va.
1999 JJ Brookings Gallery, San Francisco
Jack Meir Gallery, Houston




1998 "Commonwealth Collects", Center for Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach
JJ Brookings, San Francisco
1997 "Inaugural Print Portfolio Exhibition," Goya Girls Press, Mill Center,
Baltimore, Maryland.



Baltimore, Maryland.
"A Palette in a Pen's World," Georgia Museuum of Art, Athens, Georgia.
"Twelth Anniversity Exhibition", Perlow Gallery, New York
"The Still Life Show" NationsBank Gallery, Richmond, Va.
1996 "Garden of Earthly Delights," Hecksher Museum, Huntington, New York.
"Women in the Visual Arts," Hollins College, curated by Sondra Freckleton



1995 Lizan-Tops Gallery, Easthampton, N.Y. "Flower Paintings"
Delaware Museum, Members' Gallery
Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery, New York
Members Gallery, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.
National Council of Jewish Women's Groups, "Focus on Art"
Loring Gallery, Sheffield, Mass.
Peninsula Fine Arts, Newport News, Virginia.
1994 "The Unstill Still Life", University of Rhode Island.



BOOK PAINTINGS

These are still lives of art books, arranged so that their images intersect and comment on each other. They are distorted and refracted through clear glass vases emblematic of the distorting lens of subjectivity. The images suggest the interaction between cultural attitudes and individual longings. They meditate on that space where society, art and desire meet.