Based in Frostburg, Maryland, Stephen Manger is a mixed media artist who often strives to remove evidence of his own hand via mono-printing on glass. Over the course of his career, he has amassed an ever-increasing collection of techniques and processes to create amorphous, highly active, and abstract images that are often torn or cut for subsequent editing to make larger collage pieces. When possible, he uses recycled materials — paint, fabric, wood — as a matter of thrift and sustainability. 

Recent works stem from a fascination with physics and cosmology. This motif, of action in general and constituents of motion, can be a stand-in for subatomic particles, the smallest elemental units of everything that is. In art, incomplete knowledge and piecemeal understanding can be useful tools that lead to unanticipated associations and unexpected results — and perhaps even beauty.

Artist’s Statement

Some of my work is informed by — or more probably a reaction to — the overabundance of conflicting information and clickbait reality that have become pervasive in most aspects of our experience. Trying to find or hold on to something fundamental is increasingly difficult, and the churn doesn’t stop.

Artmaking offers an antidote to these provocations. I imagine some tiny scrap or fragment of the universe — something atomic and irreducible — as a reasonable starting point. As a sign, symbol or motif, it is oddly objective, even if its reality is ephemeral. With a little repetition, patterns emerge. Something dependable. Something to behold.