Mica Gallery now hosts the work of Georgia Harden, of Leicester, and Marianne Cicala, of Bakersville. Both have been surrounded by creative makers throughout their lives, and each explores a unique personality in entirely different ways.
Georgia Harden, artist
Harden received a BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison after studying printmaking and metalsmithing. She now focuses on collage, juxtaposing images drawn from National Geographic magazines of the 1970s. “Collage sometimes feels more like discovery than creation,” Harden says. “My brain gets jolted from its everyday ruts of thought by the unexpected pairings of images that arise from this process.”
The child of artists, Harden grew up in rural CT, drawing, oil painting, printmaking, metalsmithing and sewing with her five siblings. Today she uses her art practice to create places and environments that evoke nostalgia through memories, both real and imagined. “A memory of a place or an experience is not the same as the actual thing,” she says. “Memory has been infused with emotion and distilled by time. During college I studied abroad on a Greek island for an exciting and turbulent three months. Over the years, my memory has erased the square modern buildings and focused on the white-washed houses with blue shutters, the many blue-domed chapels. It has forgotten the anxiety and confusion inherent to sojourning in an unfamiliar culture and enhanced the romance of making art in the Mediterranean.”
Marianne Cicala, artist
With work as distinctly personal as Harden’s, but following her own muse, Cicala throws porcelain into vases whose flowers, shaped fluidly in clay, become the subject of each piece.
Cicala received a BFA from the Memphis College of Arts in metals and had a career as a financial advisor. Success in finance and marketing left her yearning to get her hands in dirt, so she retired to study advanced permaculture design at Oregon State University. She and her husband, sculptor James Cooper, then ran their own organic farm, garden center and grocery in VA. Their dream to retire eventually to the area around Penland School of Craft led them to sell the farm in 2020.
Once settled in the Bakersville community, Cicala took an eight-week concentration with Cynthia Bringle and rediscovered her passion for clay. “I have always sought the unique peacefulness found when I’m creating gardens or walking in forests,” she says. “Simply breathing in their rhythms and textures transports me to a quiet mental place, wrapped in serenity. I find that same feeling when clay is moving in my hands; for in that moment, our upended world and its noise simply disappear.”
Cicala became a grower because of the feel of the earth in her hands and the movements and textures of plants. “Clay was clearly the vehicle for me to convey the peaceful grace and ease of nature,” she says.
Mica is an artist-run gallery of fine art and contemporary craft located at 37 North Mitchell Avenue in Bakersville. Learn more at MicaGalleryNC.com, or follow on Facebook (Mica Gallery NC) or on Instagram (micagallerync).
