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Zoey Brookshire Reception at Art Cellar Gallery August 2

Story by Linda Kramer Zoey Brookshire’s upcoming show at the Art Cellar Gallery will feature works from her series called The Little Black Dress. A reception for the artist will be held on Saturday, August 2, from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Popular artist Zoey Brookshire will be featured at the Art Cellar Gallery in Banner Elk from Thursday, July 31, to Saturday, August 23. A reception for the artist will be held on Saturday, August 2, from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m.

This exhibition is Brookshire’s fifth showing at the Art Cellar Gallery. A graduate of the University of South Carolina, Brookshire lives in Bethel, where she has had a working studio since 1982. Over the years, Brookshire has established a global presence with her works shown across the United States as well as in Europe and Asia.

The showing at the Art Cellar will include examples from several bodies of her work, including the Boola group, the most extreme examples of her modernistic abstraction in two colors. These immediate and primal visuals demonstrate a minimalist, restrictive palette, and the artist hopes that they will create a platform for the viewer’s contemplation.

The ink-on-paper ongoing The Little Black Dress series that Brookshire began in the early 1990s was inspired by a mythical fifties cocktail dress, accessorized by long black gloves holding a martini in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Brooskshire listens to women talk about who they are, what they do and how they perceive their bodies. She transfers those thoughts into visuals that celebrate the female form and spirit, and she translates the female sensual energy through elegant brushstrokes and a disciplined use of color.

A new, large series called Burmese Rubies includes psychologically moving works displaying Brookshire’s political bent that she offers in the hope that they will encourage prayers for Tibetan refugees. Samples of the Pompeii Lovers are also in the show, depicting images of the lovers of Pompeii, locked in century-long embraces, before molten lava turned them to pumice. These works are homage to those lovers and lovers everywhere.

Brookshire’s show will also include a small group of black and white bird studies, continuing the graphic theme of bird images found in many forms throughout the artist’s works.

Brookshire describes her work as a spiritual undertaking, and while she is immensely grateful to her patrons and private collectors for their commercial support, she is clear that her art is very personal, and the spiritual road she has chosen to travel is what motivates her to paint. Brookshire said, “The primary function of art is to carry a banner of freedom and open new doors and offer new options. The more options we have expand our choices in life. We are all just finite creatures with infinite possibilities. My choice was art.”

To view some of her works, click to zoeybrookshire.blogspot.com. For more info about the exhibition and artist’s reception, click to www.artcellaronline.com or call 828-898-5175.

Want To Go?

Date: Saturday, August 2
Time: 3:00 to 6:00 p.m.
Location: Art Cellar Gallery, Banner Elk
Cost: Free