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Elvis & Friends: Recent Work by Joni Mabe

October 10, 2009–January 9, 2010
Gallery C

Georgia artist Joni Mabe has been fascinated by all things Elvis since listening to his voice on the radio as a teenager. She made her first work of art dealing with “The King” on the day Presley died in 1977. Her subsequent obsession with Elvis Presley, along with her remarkable art depicting him and other significant icons of popular culture, have led to dozens of solo exhibitions in venues as far afield as Honolulu, New York and London, and television appearances on Late Night with Jay Leno, the Montel Williams Show, MTV, MSNBC and the Russian TV Network.

Elvis & Friends: Recent Works by Joni Mabe brings together a selection of her mixed-media assemblages, described by the artist as glitter mosaics. Mabe’s art celebrates kitsch, celebrity and mainstream culture, with nary a hint of cynicism or Post-Modern detachment. Other subjects in the exhibition include circus showman P. T. Barnum and bluesman Robert Johnson, in addition to Elvis at various points in his early life. Mabe’s art and her preservation work on the Loudermilk Boarding House Museum in Cornelia, GA, featuring the Panoramic Encyclopedia of Everything Elvis, have garnered awards from the Southern Arts Federation/National Endowment for the Arts, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Georgia Council for the Arts and the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Joni Mabe
Army Elvis, 2007
Glitter mosaic in mixed media
48 x 36 inches
Collection of the artist