James Harris Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of drawings by Shaun O'Dell. The artist creates intricate, highly coded drawings, the elements which recall the mythology of the American frontier and the spirit of conquest evoked by the nineteenth -century expansionist doctrine of Manifest Destiny. Such themes have been distilled into tightly honed iconography of crisply rendered glyph-like forms. The motifs in O'Dell's vocabulary included log cabins, three masted ships, peregrine falcons and the head of Puritan pilgrims or Daniel Boone-esque frontiersmen. These elements tend to suggest either the migratory movements of people and creatures or the staked claims of early homesteaders. Above all, O'Dell explores mankind's longstanding fascination with nature- the desire to claim and master it-and the deep-seated effects of such drives on the collective psyche.

O'Dell received his MFA from Stanford University in 2004. He is the recipient of the 2004 SECA Art Award given by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His work was also included in the exhibition "International Paper" at the UCLA Hammer Museum in 2003.

Leave the Capital, 2004 Ink and Gouache on paper 50 x 38"		(detail)
Primitive Contract for Metropolis Consumption vortex, 2004 Ink and Gouache on paper 26 x 35"		(detail)
The Extractor Ghosts Post-accumulation Accumulation, 2004 Colored Ink on Bristol Board Diptych 23 x 58"		(detail)
Trans-scriptural Awakening from the Horizon of Blood Extraction, 2004 Ink on Bristol Board 29 x 23"		(detail)