Jay McCafferty

Participating Artists
Photos
Hardworking Volunteers
Sponsors
Restaurants
Press
Grand Chair Home

back to
The "Grand Chairs" & Their Artists

Born: 1948, San Pedro, CA

Education
B.A., Los Angeles State University, Los Angeles, CA
M.F.A., University of CA, Irvine, CA

Selected Solo Exhibitions
2004 Square Blue Gallery, Jay McCafferty, Recent Works, Costa Mesa, CA
2001 Hosfelt Gallery, Obsession, San Francisco, CA
2000 SPF:a, Los Angeles, CA, Jay McCafferty Solar Burned Works, Curated by Mark Moore
1999 Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, Flicker
1996 Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
1995 Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
1994 Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica, CA

Selected Group Exhibitions
2001 University Art Gallery, University of California, San Diego, Obsessions
2000 Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica, CA Horror Vacuui,
1997 Thomas F. Riley Terminal, Orange County Airport, Costa Mesa, CA, Focus VI: Orange County Artists/A Sphere of Influence; curated by Mike McGee & School of The Arts, UC Irvine, A Hotbed of Advanced Art: Four Decades of the Visual Arts at UCI
1996 Harriet Luckman Fine Art Center, CSU, Los Angeles, CSLA Alumni Exhibition
1994 Jan Abrams Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, Paper Presence, December 6 - January 12, 1995

Grants and Awards
1976 National Endowment for the Arts, Fellowship Grant
1974 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, New Talent Award

Called one of "late modernism's more idiosyncratic figures," Jay McCafferty is a pioneer and ongoing practitioner of the process art movement which had its inception in the 1970s. He is known for his trademark "solar burn" compositions. In many of his works, McCafferty uses a small hand magnifier to concentrate sunlight onto paper or Masonite, where cigarette-sized burn holes are arrayed in orderly grid patterns. The artist maintains that these dynamics form the primary constituents of process art where the act of creation is a matter of preserving and amplifying the present moment, of internalizing what is seen, of resolving contraries, and of balancing visual components while exploring their spatial, spectral and tactile relationships. McCafferty states that achieving harmony among these components is an ongoing spiritual quest for the "pure aesthetic experience" - a thing elusive and indefinable by its very nature.
(Drawn from Jay McCafferty and John Paul Jones at Square Blue Gallery)