May 17 - June 7, 2013
Opening Night May 17, 6-11p
Closing 1st June 7, 6-10p

Sacred Drum Journeying Workshop on Sunday May 26
Multi-Faceted Diamond Yoga Workshop on Sunday June 2

HINTERLAND is pleased to present new mandala drawings and collages by Gemma Bayly. MIRRORS will run from May 17 - June 7, 2013 with an Opening Reception Friday, May 17 from 6p - 11p at HINTERLAND and will close with a 1st Friday Reception June 7, 6 - 10p. Gemma will also be offering a Sacred Drum Journeying Workshop on Sunday May 26th and a Multi-Faceted Diamond Yoga Workshop on Sunday June 2nd, both by donation.


Additional gallery hours are by appointment – please contact Sabin Aell: 720.309.1764. For more information visit hinterlandartspace.com or email contact@hinterlandartspace.com.

Born and raised in rural countryside England, Gemma immigrated to the States with her family when she was 11, in 1994. She graduated from the University of Kansas in 2007 with a BFA in Graphic Design, as her parents pushed her to the more “lucrative” side of the visual arts. Her first design job was with a Kansas City architectural firm, and it was during this time that Gemma was introduced to the Japanese healing art of Reiki. She began receiving regular sessions and studying under a Reiki Master in Kansas City.

In 2009, Gemma moved to Denver for a new job at a small design firm downtown. She fell in love with the city and the mountains, but began to fall out of love with the design industry. Becoming more and more sensitive to energy in her Reiki practice, the long work weeks in front of computers and demanding clients were creatively draining. She began making art in her evenings after work as a way to calm down, and as a rejection of the technology she was using to create with all day. The pieces became containers for the energies she was working with in her Reiki practice. She denies herself the use of a ruler in her ink work, focusing on the true value of the human hand in art. She also focuses on the value of time in art, creating drawings that take months to finish, again in rejection of the impossibly fast paced and unrealistic demand on creativity from the design and advertising industries. Her first public exhibition was with Project Hello! at Redline, Denver in 2011, introducing new artists to the Denver community. She was then invited to be the first artist to exhibit in the new Art Plant space at City O’ City. She had her second solo show at Ironwood, Denver in April of 2012, and has since exhibited in several galleries in London. She was recently featured in the collage group show “The Vital Illusion” for the Month of Photography. Mirrors is her first gallery solo exhibit.

Mirrors
is a series of works on self-reference, self-examination, and self-awareness. Inspired by the writings of Douglas Hofstadter and Gemma's own personal findings in her Reiki practice, Mirrors is an attempt to understand our multi-dimensional reality in terms of an infinite feedback loop. When placing a mirror in front of a mirror, or a camera recording its own output, it creates an infinitude of images, self-implicating in to a vanishing point. Similarly, two people together mirror each other through our ‘mirror neurons’ in the frontal lobe of the brain, and together we form reality.

Existing in the realms between the physical and spiritual planes, Gemma conjures a Pythagorean quantum mysticism in her work. Her drawings and collages stir subconscious parts of our being that we may not understand or be aware of. She plays with theories in physics, ignited by the vortex work of Nassim Haramein, and our physical experience of the multidimensional energies around us. Her totemic collages favor the natural law of bilateral symmetry, subtly centering and attuning the audience along a direct narrative. Her geocentric mandalas are inviting portals and multifaceted conduits of cosmic energy. Gemma practices the ancient Japanese healing art of Reiki, and charges all of her creations with this sacred healing energy.