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By Deborah Freeland

“Paradox in Paradise,” paintings by Lea Barton, will be open to the public June 16 - August 25, in the Lawrence and Fortune Galleries. A reception for the artist will be held at the museum on Sunday, June 15, 1:00 - 2:00 p.m.

Organized through The University of Mississippi Museums, “Paradox in Paradise” opens the museum’s summer exhibitions with a step back into the past. In Barton’s own words, her work is about “remembering, recording and reclaiming.” She uses text and collage to explore new and effective ways to present her ideas visually.

René Paul Barilleaux, Director of Programs for the Mississippi Museum of Art describes Barton’s dense canvases as “exploring diverse aspects of Southern culture, including history, race, and religion.”

Her work is Southern, but not exclusively so. After graduating from Millsaps College in 1996, Barton moved to New York for two years to earn a Master of Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute. She said that she became more of a Southerner after living in the North. Her experiences in the city and being asked to “tell about the South” motivated her to re-examine the culture that she “had ignored, rebelled against, and taken for granted.”

“My images have several meanings,” said Barton. “I use my own photographs as well as appropriated images.” In her collage, Bales and Queens, the photographed faces of 1960’s beauty queens smile among illustrations of billowing antebellum gowns. Perhaps Ghost makes a stronger social comment with the use of a quote from William Faulkner incorporated as a border: “Years ago we in the South made our women into ghosts.” Faulkner’s words surround a collage of three identical dresses, each accented with a different necklace. A photograph of the ruins of Windsor, the once great, dowry-built antebellum mansion in Port Gibson, Mississippi, appears near the top. The words continue around the edge “So what else can we do, being gentlemen but listen to them being ghosts.”