SEPTEMBER 2, 2010 ISSUE
Gallery News
Downtown Boone Art Crawl Friday
The monthly Downtown Boone Art Crawl takes place this Friday, September 3. Receptions at several downtown art galleries begin around 6:00 p.m. and continue throughout the evening. The Downtown Boone Development Association sponsors the Art Crawl. For more info, call 828-262-4532.
Paper collage artist Carolyn Chester is featured at ArtWalk during this Friday’s Art Crawl.
ArtWalk
611 West King Street
828-264-9998
Carolyn Chester, who currently resides in Greensboro with her husband Ken, is one of ArtWalk’s newest artists. Her technique sets her apart from the many other artists in the area.
By intricately cutting and overlapping a wide array of colored and textured paper, she creates vibrant paper collage images with amazing craftsmanship and attention to detail. At times the textures of the paper suggest detail, while at other times, a lack of texture gives pieces a graphic quality.
Butterflies, coastal scenery and Native American iconography are a few of the themes in Chester’s work. Neutral hues tie all the pieces together and make them easy to fit into most interior design plans. Her pieces range in size from small to medium and are extremely inexpensive for original works of art, especially considering that each comes framed and behind glass.
Chester graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1979 with an art degree. Since then, she has been a board member for the Avery Arts Council, painted murals, juried for the Regional Artist Project Grant for Western North Carolina, won fifth place at the Grove Park Inn Gingerbread Competition, won Best in Show at the North Carolina Zoo’s Australian Exhibit and has had her work shown in both Boone and Greensboro.
Chester’s paper collages are located in ArtWalk’s lower level, and with three and a half floors and more than 300 local, regional and national artists, art lovers are sure to fall in love with ArtWalk.
The Collective on Depot
125 South Depot Street
artists@thecollectiveondepot.com
Join the artists of The Collective on Depot this Friday from 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. as they open their studio doors to the public and showcase their latest works.
The Collective on Depot is a work and studio space for local artists and musicians who bring different media and perspectives to the group and foster a constant dynamic for collaboration, interaction and inspiration.
Current members are Brook Bower, Jamie Carroll, Lindsey Cero, Laura Henley, Dan Kaple, Brian Knox, Peter Oakley, Uijin Park, Melissa Reaves and Christian Smith. In addition to being an active studio space, The Collective on Depot is also a gallery and performance space for regional and non-regional artists and musicians and has been in operation since 2007.
The Collective on Depot is located to the left of Black Cat Burrito.
Works by Elliot Coatney, including “Barbasol,” are on display in the Watauga Arts Council’s Mazie Jones Gallery at the Jones House.
The Mountain Laurel Quilt Guild exhibits in the Jones House’s Open Door Gallery.
Jones House Community Center
634 West King Street
828-264-1789
This Friday, the Watauga Arts Council will have three new exhibits on display for the month of September and an opening wine and cheese reception from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. at the Jones House.
Featured in the Mazie Jones Gallery is Elliot Coatney, whose medium is acrylic. Coatney has lived in the Boone area since his teen years, graduating from both Watauga High School and ASU. He started drawing and painting in watercolor at a young age, experimenting with various media throughout his school years but has not had any formal art training.
In 2007, Coatney found the focus and direction to paint regularly as he began working with Canadian painter Brian Simons. He has exhibited in several juried shows around the Southeast, taking top prize at the latest “Best of the Blue Ridge” show and competition for his painting “Biltmore Laundry.” Presently, he has work in private collections in the U.S., Germany and Great Britain.
Coatney’s paintings reflect his use of saturated colors, abbreviated detail and throbbing contrasts to create loose, simple compositions full of energy and joy. Although his work is representational, he says that he is not particularly interested in recreating or even “capturing” a scene. He is interested in the unique emotional and even spiritual impact that paint on canvas can have on a viewer.
The Open Door Gallery has an exhibit by the Mountain Laurel Quilt Guild titled Trees of Appalachia. The quilts in this exhibit represent the wide range of talent of their members. The guild offers workshops and instruction for new and experienced quilters and helps the community by making “Friendship Quilts” for elderly and wheelchair-bound people and baby blankets for newborn babies whose families are in need.
The Arts Council is also pleased to announce a new exhibit in its Senior Gallery. This gallery houses the artwork of many of seniors from the Lois Harrill Center in Boone located on the Poplar Grove Connector. They are instructed by Marsha Holmes, who has been teaching for about 10 years and has been painting for much longer.
Heather Divoky’s “superdoodles” are full of bold color and detail at the Nthº Gallery.
Nthº Gallery and Studios
683 West King Street
On Friday, September 3, the Nthº Gallery & Studios will feature “superdoodles!” by Heather Divoky. The show starts at 7:30 p.m., and light refreshments will be served.
Divoky is a part-time artist and full-time explorer of the unknown. She is a senior at ASU majoring in art history. ‘superdoodles!’ is a product of Divoky’s love of markers, as well as a love for categories, nature, listing things and Jeopardy.
The project originated out of a classic case of classroom boredom—what started off as a couple of doodles in the margins of her paper quickly grew into rather large and overtly detailed pieces of art on display. One of Heather’s teachers once called her art “the detail disease,” and a friend described it as “superdoodles,” two descriptors she now lovingly uses.
Divoky’s aim in her art is to have viewers “fall into her pieces”—in other words, to look at her pieces over and over and always find something new.
The Nth? Gallery & Studios, located at 683 West King Street, is an alternative art space for new and emerging artists in the region. Gallery hours outside of First Friday openings are sporadic—call 828-719-9493 to schedule an appointment or come to the meeting on Monday nights at 8:00 p.m.
The Nthº Gallery is located across from the Post Office and above Loretta’s Vendetta.
Turchin Center for the Visual Arts
423 West King Street
828-262-3017
Continuing exhibitions at the Turchin Center include In the Shadow of Volcanoes, Tanase Fontenot: From Acadia Italian Holocaust Survivors Remember, Perspectives in Bronze: Works by Greg Bailey & Michael Warrick, Amy Cheng: Evidence of Things Unseen and MANinfested DESTINY: From Boone to Boon—A Re-Interpretation by Dan Smith.
In the Shadow of the Volcanoes in the Main Gallery explores works in a wide range of media by contemporary Mexican artists. A select group of Talavera pottery will be presented in the Mezzanine Gallery. Talavera pottery has been created in Puebla, Mexico since the 15th century.
From Acadia, an exhibition by Tanase Fontenot, is on display in the Catwalk Community Gallery. A self-taught artist from Cajun Louisiana, Fontenot works with oil pastels on black, gessoed, cold press watercolor paper. Also on display in the Catwalk Community Gallery is Italian Holocaust Survivors Remember. This exhibit features black and white portraits, audio clips and video footage pulled from 2007 interviews with Italian Holocaust survivors.
MANinfested DESTINY, located in Gallery A, is a “living exhibition” in which the components of the exhibition will be altered, moved and transformed by the artist until the close of the exhibition. Smith’s work is an environmentally and historically based exhibition and incorporates photographs, paintings and natural and manmade objects with historical documentation that investigates aspects of the American Revolution, the Great Awakening, the Enlightenment, global conflict, new technology and sustainable development. The artist will be in the gallery on Wednesdays and will be available to answer questions about his work.
In addition to his exhibit, Smith will organize two guided walking tours through Boone to discuss the life of American pioneer Daniel Boone. The tours are scheduled for Saturdays, September 4 and October 2, from 10:00 a.m. until noon. The tours will begin at the Turchin Center.
In Perspectives in Bronze in Gallery B, Bailey's bronze work is "based upon an intellectual and emotional response to the predictions of the future regarding the planetary sustainability of human life," and Warrick's bronze work is a direct "exploration of organic form and textural surface with a natural color pallet" derived from found objects.
In the Mayer Gallery, Cheng’s work is about the irrepressible life force we encounter in nature where the physical, sensual, spiritual, cerebral, and erotic coexist in a nexus. She believes that on a very basic level, the human nervous system responds organically to pattern-making.
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