The Thacher Gallery at the University of San Francisco Presents ‘Lost Keys: Recent Works by Mercy Hawkins’
The exhibition will run from August 22 to November 6, 2022
SAN FRANCISCO, CA (August 22, 2022) – The Thacher Gallery at the University of San Francisco (USF) presents ‘Lost Keys: Recent Works by Mercy Hawkins’, on view from August 22 through November 6, 2022 in the Thacher Gallery and on the Kalmanovitz Hall Sculpture Terrace on the USF campus. This exhibition is showing concurrently with ‘Soft Power: Recent Projects by Alexander Hernandez’.In large-scale ink drawings and sculptural paintings, mixed-media artist Mercy Hawkins combines traditional craft techniques with colors and patterns found in the landscape to reveal the ways that humans are a part of the natural world.‘Lost Keys’ features recent projects displayed in multiple locations across the USF campus. In the Kalmanovitz Hall Atrium and on the third floor Sculpture Terrace are various textile sculptures, including the new installation ‘A Place in the Sun’. Bound with netting and strings and covered in intricate patterns drawn from leaves, bark, and water, the sculptures take on organic shapes suggestive of plant and human forms. Within the Thacher Gallery are large-scale abstract drawings in ink and watercolor, along with additional three-dimensional works. “Within my work, I seek to elevate an understanding, in our increasingly alienated world, that we are not just single beings, we, too, are the earth, the ocean, the sky,” said artist Mercy Hawkins.
About the Artist
Mercy Hawkins is a mixed-media artist who received her BA in Studio Art from California State University, Sacramento, and her MFA in Studio Art from the University of California, Davis. She has exhibited her work across California, including at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley and at the UC Davis Manetti Shrem Museum of Art. A recipient of multiple awards, she recently completed a graduate fellowship residency at The Headlands Center for the Arts. Hawkins currently teaches art at UC Davis and California State University, Sacramento.
About the Thacher Gallery at the University of San Francisco
The Thacher Gallery is a public art gallery in the University of San Francisco’s Gleeson Library where creativity, scholarship, and community converge. The exhibitions in the 2021-22 season will examine ecology and environmental justice. The gallery is free and open to the public 12-6pm daily. Appointments required for the sculpture terrace. USF pandemic protocols required.
About the University of San Francisco
The University of San Francisco is a private, Jesuit Catholic university that reflects the diversity, optimism, and opportunities of the city that surrounds it. USF offers more than 230 undergraduate, graduate, professional, and certificate programs in the arts and sciences, business, law, education, and nursing and health professions. At USF, each course is an intimate learning community in which top professors encourage students to turn learning into positive action, so the students graduate equipped to do well in the world — and inspired to change it for the better. For more information, visit usfca.edu.