Steve Pauley currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Pauley earned his MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, MD. He received his MA from Marshall University, WV and BA from West Virginia State University (WVSU). Pauley has shown internationally, including at Skolska28 Prague, CR. Solo exhibitions include Broadway Gallery in New York, Amalie Rothschild Gallery in Baltimore and Della Brown Taylor Gallery, WVSU.
New York Times art critic Holland Cotter described Pauley’s work as the most striking and unorthodox in the exhibition Bird Flew, curated by Robert Storr, at Tribes gallery in NY. Pauley’s reviews include the Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Charleston Daily Mail, and NY Arts Magazine, and his work has been featured on All Things Considered on NPR and on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.
Bridging sculpture with photography, printmaking, painting, installation and performance, Pauley’s art evolved organically from his work as a headstone carver and as a photography teacher. He explores engraving anamorphic images into polished granite, which are then projected onto a wall by bouncing light off the stone’s surface. Fusing the time-intensive labor of hand engraving stone and the mechanical reproduction of photography, Pauley’s current investigations include projecting that image onto light sensitive paper in a darkroom without the use of a camera or film. Joining stone’s hard durability with the immateriality of light and shadow, Pauley creates work at once spiritual and worldly; tragic, hopeful and eternal.
