Gary Spinosa: Divine Instinct

The vaulted, intimate space of the McCain Gallery tends to inspire explorations of mystery, spirituality, and multi-sensory experience. Gary Spinosa’s sculptures and installations will transform the gallery into a space for meditation and wonder and a place to contemplate the divine.

Spinosa absorbs inspiration from the broad history of sacred art: fertility figures, icons, altars, paintings, sculptures, and roadside shrines. Spinosa believes there is an “innate communicating power contained and emitted through the object itself [that] …reflects man’s sacred capacity to merge spirit into matter and make seemingly intangible tangible.”

Spinosa’s sculptures hearken back to the figures and fetishes of prehistoric peoples, yet they are of our moment. His smooth porcelain creations fit the hand like a polished stone. Neither, and yet both, human and animal, with eyes like medieval saints, dolphins, and cowrie shells, they quietly unfurl, emerge, and blend. Spinosa constructs shrines that evoke elaborate Catholic reliquaries to surround his porcelain “stones” and collections of meaningful objects. His works invite contemplation of the universal human search to understand and connect to the power and beauty of the divine.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website