Little Red Rocket Rides the Streets

Jilly in her little Red Rocket.

“Hmmm…. Would this work?”  I asked my wife, lowering a circular chip and dip tray onto an inverted plastic trash can sitting in a Wal-Mart shopping cart.  “Maybe…” she added after squinting and eyeballing the prospect. 

We were doing the unimaginable – turning a little red wagon (almost a radio flyer, but not quite) into a little red rocket for the Great American Red Wagon Contest in Danville, Kentucky.  Our two and a half year old daughter was skipping down the aisles of our local department store, oblivious to the fact that we weren’t buying junk - but rocket components.  We ended up purchasing a trash can, a plastic margarita glass, a package of ping pong balls, a swimming pool noodle, some star decor, ribbons, super glue and red and yellow cans of spray paint (to make it look a bit more retro).  It’s times like these when you leave the check out counter giggling inside with the knowledge that the cashier has no idea what you’re using this stuff for.  We weren’t eligible for any prizes as I am the Program Director for the Community Arts Center (CAC), the organization responsible for putting the event together, but I certainly wanted to up the ante as far as the public competition goes.  The Great American Red Wagon Contest was concieved in 2008 as a way to give the CAC and the local community youths a role in the Great American Brass Band Festival, an annual festival in Danville that draws in thousands of visitors from all over the world to take in a great weekend of free brass music from internationally acclaimed bands.   The festival alway has a great family and patriotic atmosphere, so the wagon contest was a great piece of wholesome, small-town, American pie thrown into the mix.  Families decorate little red wagons, they get judged and get to ride in the parade, no doubt making memories every step of the way.

We spent a good couple of nights on the front porch battling mosquitos, coughing through spray paint fumes, hot gluing (super glue doesn’t work on trash cans BTW), and bolting all of the pieces onto our maniacal masterpiece,  stepping back after each sucessful addition to congratulate each other.  This, I thought, must be how those guys building hot rods feel.  I have no mechanical skills, only aesthetic ones, so I made the most of it.  I’m more suited to a glue gun than a grease gun anyway.  When our daughter, Jillian, woke up from her nap, I was hoping that she wouldn’t be too upset that we had completely altered her little red wagon.  Gone were the cute wooden rails, and bolted in their place was an array of curiously recycled household items to build … “My rocketship!,” she said, pointing through the storm door onto the front porch.  She could hardly wait to climb inside, but we had to be very careful as most two year old astronauts do not fully understand the fragile nature of their jury-rigged spacecraft.  “Do you think it’ll go to the moon?” I asked.  “Yeah, sure,” she said with an amount of confidence that made me question if it were possible.  My mother,  AKA Nana, had sewn a silver-sequined halter top and a matching red cape with a silver star on the back of it to serve as her space suit.  I had even toyed with the notion of building her a space helmet, but my wife insisted that we keep it cute – and she was right.  I can’t imagine that Jilly would have worn a  helmet throughout the hot June morning.

The morning of the parade, as we were unloading the wagon from my father’s borrowed truck, another kid exclaimed, “That’s the best wagon I’ve ever seen!”  He may have spoken too soon because moments later the rest of the competition started rolling in – pirate ships, hot air balloons, air planes, dinosaur battles, sailboats, and even (one of my favorites) a moster truck themed wagon complete with a tie rod steering system that looked like it might be part of a modern performance-enhancing substance scandal.  It’s tires were so big that it seemed to bounce down the street in the parade.  At one point it even suffered a steering break down just like a real monster truck.  There were so many entries (around the 50 mark) that the wagons visually dominated the parade route.  It seemed to be a little red wagon parade with brass accompaniment rather than the other way around.  The bar had definitely been raised compared to last year’s entries.  Kids were in costumes – everything from Dr. Suess’ Thing 1 and Thing 2, to pirates and princesses.

Jillian loved riding her wagon in the parade, but seemed to enjoy her goody bag given to her by one of the CAC’s Board members just as much.  She recieved a little trophy that said “fanciest,” a few toys and some candy.   Since the CAC’s family members were ineligible to win the contest, it was great for them to be able to enjoy a little something extra in return.    She enjoyed her trophy so much, she ended up drinking Coca-Cola out of it later that afternoon, a practice noramlly reserved for only the most prized astronauts.  This year’s Great American Red Wagon Contest was a great success and I expect next year’s event to be even bigger and better than ever before.  I think the adults had nearly as much fun as their children.

Jilly and her trophy

 To see a slideshow of the event please follow the link below:

http://www.communityartscenter.net/gallery

Thanks,

Brandon Long

Program Director, Community Arts Center

April 2009 Arts Cart Exhibit

The Arts Cart exhibit was so big, we had to use two galleries.  Yes, both of our upstairs exhibition spaces are being used to house this wonderful exhibit.

 

Big painting by participants from Comprehensive Care Children's Program

 

The Arts Cart program is a grant-funded outreach project designed to be a mobile version of the “Community Arts Center experience” accessible to groups that may not be able to normally participate in some of the other opportunities that the Arts Center in Danville, Kentucky provides.  The groups that participate in the program show a great range of diversity (i.e. adults with mental disabilities, Big Brothers Big Sisters, children with emotional disturbances at our local Comprehensive Care center, and perhaps most interesting – a mixed group of senior citizens and kindergartners that meet at McDowell Place, an assisted living facility).  The idea for the project came from a blending of two concepts.  The first was my experience working on a 21^st Century Grant program in Lincoln County, Kentucky where I would provide arts programming to groups of disadvantaged children in an after-school program and the second was from a concept that I found googling other un-related Community Arts Centers online.  The concept was called “Art To Go” from the Community Arts Center in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. 

(Read more about the Pennsylvania Arts To GO program here: https://www.communityartscenter.org/art-to-go/)  By marrying my experiences with the 21^st Century program and the “Art To Go” concept, we started a successful outreach project.  Rather than developing a curriculum and having art “classes,” the Arts Cart focuses more on arts “activities” where the participant is allowed a bit more individual freedom to explore the art within the time period and is spared the criticism that may hamper their willingness to participate and enjoy the activity.  With the Arts Cart, we simply want people to enjoy themselves through art.  Rather than being considered “art therapy” we go for the approach of “art as therapy.”

 

Each group has its own unique skill set and limitations for which Arts Cart staff and volunteers must consider when preparing an activity.  For example, the group at Pioneer Vocational Industries is limited in their abilities to use scissors and other fine motor movements.  The group of seniors and kindergartners has difficulties with very small objects like beads.  Participants in several of the groups have low literacy levels, requiring full verbal instruction on most projects.  Planning the day’s activity is the most difficult task.  Every element of the activity must also be adaptable in order to fill the near hour-long time slot.  For project staff, improvisational skills are an essential.

 

Although there is a lot of work to see in the exhibition, the pieces exhibited are only the tip of the iceberg.  Most arts cart participants choose to keep their art, so the exhibit only shows a few of pieces that we have been able to collect over the year and a half that the program has been in operation. 

 

Among the works exhibited are what I like to call “the big paintings.”  These paintings are done on a painter’s canvas drop cloth, which I highly recommend as a low-cost solution to providing a big canvas space.  They usually cost around $10 for a cloth about 9’ by 6’, the largest of the big paintings on exhibit.  With the exception of a couple of paintings done for Great American Brass Band Festival displays, the big paintings are a unique artist collaboration between Arts Cart staff and participants.  In preparing a larger painting, I encourage the participants to draw images on a particular theme.  When the drawings are finished, I cut out and separate each image, collaging them together to make a larger composite scene.  When I have the layout completed, I then reduce the size of the combined images in order to make it the proper size for our opaque projector.  The image is projected onto the canvas and the basic lines are painted, almost like a coloring book.  The next session is spent with the participants coloring in the lines and shapes to complete the final big picture.  One of the most beneficial aspects of this particular process is that the participants must learn to work together to create the final product.  The person that originally drew an image on the painting might not be the person that gets to paint it in.  I like the way that the original nuances of the participant drawings can be translated onto a larger surface by projection without losing their individual charm.

 

Other works on display include paintings from our 2008 Summer Camp where we had around 40 kids show up for free arts activities.  They made ceramics, paintings, and drawings as well as participated in classes in creative movement and dance with assistance from some of the areas gifted arts instructors including Jacque Kahanic, Jack Kaiser, and Yolanda Pace.

 

The Arts Cart program is one of the Community Arts Center’s greatest outreach programs and backs up our belief that art can be and should be accessible to everyone.  Through the Arts Cart program, we attempt to create a great day for all of the participants involved through the arts.  We are observing some positive results among our participants as well.  Nancy Martindale has noticed of her group at Advocate Homes, “That one student early on would paint with such force that the bristles would fall out of the brush, making holes in the paper. Now that same student has learned to make delicate brushstrokes.”  The Arts Cart is also a very warm and rewarding opportunity for our staff and volunteers working in the program.  There truly is no greater joy than to walk into a room and hear, “The art guy’s here!” by an excited and eager group of Arts Cart participants.

Danville - Painting by Arts Cart participants from the Southwood program at Comprehensive Care.

 

The exhibit will be on display throughout April 2009 with an opening reception on the 16^th from 6:00-8:00 pm.

APRIL 2009 EXHIBIT: DLDA

Blue by Vaughn

The third annual DLDA (Danville Learning Disabilities Association) exhibition at the Community Arts Center in Danville, Kentucky, sees the exhibit getting bigger, involving more children, as well as sharpening its focus. This exhibit showcases well over one hundred works of art from children in the region with learning disabilities. Where the exhibit once featured a variety of media, including ceramics, it now solely focuses on paintings by the students. This decision by the organization has made the show much more uniform by placing all of the students within the same parameters of size and format. The sheer number of paintings becomes an instant delight when stepping into the Community Arts Center’s Grand Hall. Each year the show gets larger by involving more schools, more classes, and more children. Rumor has it that next year’s show may even be growing larger to include work from outside the region – possibly even nation wide.

The greatest part of this exhibit, which has grown to become one of my perennial favorites, is the artists themselves. Opening night sees so many children with learning disabilities crowding into the gallery, standing proudly by their work, having their pictures taken, and hustling sales. These kids can sell like nobody’s business. Each piece in the exhibit sells for a flat rate of $25, with $20 going to the artist and $5 going to the DLDA – so the students are eager to mingle with their buying public. Usually friends and family purchase the pieces to support their budding artists, but a lot of these paintings are also sold to gallery patrons who have never met the artists. I have a wonderfully minimal striped painting hanging in my kitchen by an artist named Alejandro that I bought at the first DLDA exhibit and it makes me want to smile every time I see it. Even though these students may have learning disabilities, it doesn’t hinder their creative sensibilities in any way. There are some paintings in this exhibit that any (and I do mean any) abstract expressionist would love to have painted themselves. As an artist, I go into this show looking for inspiration and find it in heaping spades. I don’t see this exhibit as a representation of students with learning disabilities, but rather an exhibit by a group of artists with their own perspectives and interpretations. These students approach each of these works with such energy and lack of angst that each becomes a masterpiece in its own right. Artists must reach that certain point where they can put aside their self-criticism and enjoy the process, the initial part of any artistic endeavor. The kids in that show seem to live in that moment. Rather than being overwhelmed with the possibilities of the blank canvas, they appear to just dive right into the work and emerge with a completed painting that truly represents the moment in which they created it. A lot of artists claim that they make work “that shows my emotion at the time,” but with the painting taking days or weeks to complete, I often find myself wondering which moment of time they were striving to create. The artists in this exhibit are a fine example of living in the moment of joyous creativity – knowing that when the paint dries, the pictures are hanged, and the spotlights are on, that their work will be seen by the world.

Group shot of some of the 2009 DLDA paintings.

Opening night for this exhibit is April 16th, 2009 from 6-8:00. The paintings will be on display until the end of the month.

March 2009 Wrap-up: David Farmer and Marianna McDonald

If you stepped into the Community Arts Center last month (March 2009) you found yourself surrounded by trees.  Well… paintings of trees.  David Farmer, Artist in Residence at the CAC, has assembled sixteen paintings of one of his favorite subjects in his month long exhibit, “Trees.”

 

 

 

Trees are a surprisingly hot topic around Danville, Kentucky at the present time.  In the month prior to Farmer’s exhibition, a winter storm whipped through the region, covering every outside surface in about a half inch of ice, downing electricity lines, and cutting off power to nearly every home.  Trees were groaning under the excess pressure from the weight of the ice and loud snaps of falling limbs were about the only sounds to be heard.  Weeks later, even as we were installing the exhibit, piles of twigs and limbs littered the sidewalks like walls, waiting to be collected by contract workers.  The area definitely looks much different today as a result of the damage with an otherwise beautiful landscape punctuated by trees that look more like a fistful of broken matchsticks.  The damage was so severe, that David told me in the days ahead of the exhibit, “Maybe I should’ve painted something different.  Trees don’t seem too popular these days.”

 

The strength of Farmer’s exhibit lies in the similarities between the canvases.  All but six of the paintings on display exhibit almost the same compositional features.  The images feature a cropped image of a forest tree line, where the viewer doesn’t quite see the bottom of the trees, nor the top, but rather the trunk and foliage of the subject.  When looking around the Community Arts Center’s Grand Hall, you almost get the sensation that you are surrounded in a forest, with each painting creating an illusionary window to the outside.  The vertical rhythms created by the white limbs of sycamore and birch trees provide a stark contrast to the bright colors of spring and autumn leaves.  These paintings, although painted in a representational style, reflect a very abstract approach to their construction.  White and black lines represent the trunks of trees while their leaves are painted with a dappling of thick, colorful brushstrokes, creating a very textural effect to the leaves in the foreground.  I find trees to be one of the more difficult subjects to paint in that there is a certain organic abstraction in their form.  If the artist goes too simple, it looks like a cartoon, too complex and it looks contrived and man-made.  Farmer finds the delicate balance between these two extremes and creates a painterly, yet realistic approach.

 

In the Farmers National Bank Gallery upstairs at the Community Arts Center, the works of Marianna McDonald were on display.  Her exhibit, “Landscapes in Pastel,” featured very distinguished pastel works on paper.  In my opinion, one of the greatest things that McDonald does is to create a magnificent landscape out of a scene that depicts very little in terms of subject matter or focal points.  An open field of grass becomes so rich, bathed in the purple and pink shades of early evening that it needs little else to propel it into the realm of fine art.  Although McDonald creates scenes predominantly featuring Kentucky and West Virginia, there is an almost universal feel to her landscapes.  One gets the feeling that they could be almost anywhere in the world – anywhere but the busy cityscape, that is.  She often flirts with variations in size and dimension.  There were several large works on display, but also some very small – in the neighborhood of four inches square.  Each, regardless of size depicts the scenery in the warmest tones imaginable.  The works remind me of the very end of summer, where the skies finally clear into that deep blue and that magical light just before dusk – the kind photographers seek to bottle up – seeps in just before an amber sunset.

 

 

February 2009: Heart of Kentucky Photojournalism Exhibit of Danville/Boyle County, Kentucky by Mountain Workshops.

 

Where the Wild Things Are -- Chris Floyd, 2007.

 Rewind back to the Autumn of 2007 in Danville, Kentucky.  The small Kentucky town was absolutely inundated with photojournalists following residents, tracking stories, taking photographs – but perhaps most of all, searching for the “moment.” The moment where the elements of a successful photograph align – subject, story, composition, lighting, and emotional impact all work together to present a remarkable document of a person, time, or place.The participants of the project – 48 photojournalists, 12 multimedia journalists, five designer/editors, one multimedia specialist, and 62 faculty and staff loaded into town, taking part in a project that was started at Western Kentucky University in 1976 as a part of their School of Journalism and Broadcasting. The concept is simple enough: travel with a group of students, staff, and professionals to document Kentucky communities through still photography, video, and interviews. Of course, this simple idea gets quite complicated in its execution – requiring what seems to be the about the same amount of crew, equipment setup and technology as your average rock and roll stadium tour. Having done this since 1976, the Mountain Workshops crew has it down to a science. With assistance from the Danville/Boyle County Convention and Business Bureau, the group was able to find a suitable home for their base of operations at the Convention Center where they could spread their roots, using 91 Macintosh computers and over a half-mile of ethernet cable. According to James Kenney of Mountain Workshops, this location provided the most accommodating setup that the group has been able to work within. Photographers would shoot the images mostly during the day, usually under natural lighting conditions and then trek back to the Convention Center to upload their work. Mountain Workshops has managed to evolve alongside photo technology, now working in digital media, rather than the 35mm film that their predecessors started with years ago. I can’t imagine what an undertaking a project of this scope would have been without the convenience and accessibility of digital photography.

The stories that the group captured during their brief residence in Danville include:

“Man About Town,” a bio on Hal Campbell, a legally blind world-traveling pianist in his seventies whose memory alone can serve as a living history of the region.

“Unbreakable Spirit,” the story of Daniel McCarty, a preschooler with severe brittle-bone disease, whose spirit and determination are an inspiration to the community.

“Big Man on Campus,” a photo-essay about John Roush, president of Centre College.

“Where the Wild Things Are,” the story of the Wood family, whose home is a bustling center of activity with two parents and eleven children.

There were originally 72 story concepts on the table at the outset of the project, with 60 of those stories reaching completion. The delegation of the stories among the workshop participants is handled by the time-tested tradition of pulling slips of paper out of a hat. This creates a challenging environment for the students at work as they may or may not have their favorite subject to cover. In my opinion, that element of selected randomness is one of the components that makes this workshop so strong. In the real world of photojournalism, the photographer may not get to hand select his or her story. The creativity of the photographers and journalists is allowed to shine in how they produce their story, what angles they focus on, and how they present the ideas and concept behind the subject.

The exhibit at the Community Arts Center in Danville is presented in three parts – the gallery exhibit of the color photographs captured during the workshop, a multimedia presentation featuring audio and video interviews of the subjects and a 115 page paperback book available at a suggested donation of $20.

The most intriguing aspect of the exhibit and of the project as a whole is the way that the community that I am so familiar with can be so accurately captured by outsiders. Even though story ideas are generated by community members prior to the workshop – it is still amazing how the scope of this project includes all angles of our diverse society. The same amount of coverage is given to a college president, a small business owner, farmers, athletes, rich, and poor. I am also intrigued how the photos that were captured by these photographers during their brief visit represent an iconic image of each of the subjects covered. If I, or any other amateur photographer were covering the same stories, I am certain that we would spend most of our time waiting for something to happen and miss all of the real photographic opportunities in between. According to the companion book to the exhibit, more than 40,000 images were shot during the week of the Mountain Workshops project in Danville. I am convinced that it takes at least that many pictures (maybe more) to accurately depict a community and to show the many facets of its citizens. As with all photojournalism and documentary photography, the greatest message is perhaps the simplest, from both the photographer and the subject, “We existed. We were here.”

 

 

 

Brothers in Arms – Ronald Erdrich –2007

 To see the multimedia slideshow from the exhibit, click the link below.

http://danville.mountainworkshops.org/

Thanks,

Brandon Long

APRIL EXHIBIT REVIEW AT THE CAC

 

 

This month at the Community Arts Center in Danville, Kentucky, there is a strong emphasis on student work with great exhibits from the Danville Learning Disabilities Association (the DLDA), and Danville Christian Academy.  Susan Black, a local photographer getting her start in floral photography also had an excellent display.

 

“The Hands that Touch the Heart” -  DLDA Student Exhibit

 

Last year, the Community Arts Center had an exhibit with the Danville Learning Disabilities Association in what I would like to call “accessory spaces” – spaces that aren’t normally used for exhibits in the basement and in one of our upstairs studios.  The exhibit had all kinds of work from the students – perhaps even too much.  Each student had a number of works on anything from paper to ceramics, which was a challenge to hang in our historic facility with ancient plaster-over-lathe walls that you can’t put nails into without starting cracks that take a few years to reach their full potential.  So, we taped pieces all over the walls.  When we ran out of room in the basement, we continued to tape things in the hall upstairs and in the studio normally used for yoga class.  I’ll admit that I had underestimated the size (likely over one hundred works) and impact of this exhibit.  On opening night in 2007, we had all kinds of kids in the building on every level, proudly showing off their latest creations.  It was inspiring to see how excited the students were to be able to point to a piece on the wall and say with a smile, “That’s mine.”  Pieces were sold for $25 with $20 going to the artist and $5 going to the DLDA which doesn’t seem like a lot of money for a painting, but the kids were thrilled to be making a sale.  My wife and I both agreed on an excellent minimalist striped piece by an artist named Alejandro.  After that first opening, I had decided that we should probably make this an annual event at the Arts Center.

 

 

Andrea Cass from the DLDA helps me put on this exhibit and really takes the initiative to get the whole project going.  We decided that for 2008, we would have the exhibit in April – Autism Awareness Month.  I noticed that as April rolled around, CNN was featuring all kinds of stories on autism, which helped to give the show a bit of perspective.  Andrea and I had also decided that we would make the show a bit more streamlined.  Each student would be able to create one painting or ceramic piece.  This also allowed us to include students from more schools – Boyle, Danville, Perryville, Junction City, and even Garrard County students were able to participate this year.  2007’s exhibit featured works that weren’t in the best of conditions for an exhibit.  A lot of the pieces were on single sheets of fairly lightweight paper which sadly didn’t stand up too well to being duct taped to the wall.  This year, Andrea was able to get enough wood and canvas stretchers for the students to create works with much more durability and lasting appeal.  Paint was donated by DecoArt in Stanford. 

 

The exhibit this year is nothing short of wonderful with around 75 paintings on display.  Some are funny, others are charming, and some are stand-alone masterpieces of abstraction.  What makes this exhibit interesting is the absolute abandon that these artists show in the creation of their work.  You can tell by looking at these paintings that the artist is living in the moment, fully enjoying every juicy brushstroke without concern for any particular assignment or objective other than to make a great painting.  A viewer can tell when an artist is hindered by self-criticism – held back by self doubt.  I can’t think of a single painting in this exhibit that shows any sign of deliberation.  It appears as if every artist were the most confident, accomplished painter on earth.  Another interesting aspect of the exhibit is how pop culture sneaks in to the work every now and again.  One painting features a Dodge logo, another features the characters of Aqua Teen Hungerforce, while others show everything from monster trucks to Spongebob’s pet snail Gary.  On opening night, many of the paintings sold to the near record attendance of 325 people.  The great thing is that people were buying paintings from artists that they didn’t really know based not on who the artist was, but on the strength of the work.  I was a bit disappointed when the painting I had my eye on (the one in the photo above) was one of the first to sell.  This exhibit is one of my favorites and certainly one of the highlights of the year because it’s rare to see an artist so excited about their work being on display.

 

Danville Christian Academy Student Art Exhibition

 

Robert Moler is one of the better known artists in the Danville art scene and is accomplished in several very different styles of painting.  He also has experience in putting together art exhibits as he hosted a number of juried shows at the Wilderness Trace Art Gallery here in town.  I was very pleased when he stopped by the Community Arts Center last year to tell me he was going to be teaching art at Danville Christian Academy, a private school in the community.  I knew that his experience with various media and his ability to teach others about art would be a great fit for the program.  Without deliberation, I signed him up for an exhibit of student work. 

 

The work by the students in this exhibit is absolutely amazing.  The students are painting with a maturity far beyond their years and you can tell that they actually understand what they are doing.  All the basics are there:  color mixing, composition, and technique – but most of these works do not appear to be created by children.  The work I have photographed for this blog is a dead ringer for a landscape by Munch, the artist best known for his painting (or paintings rather as there are several) The Scream.  The range of projects presented in this exhibit is refreshing.  Rather than just paintings and drawings, this exhibit showcases painted wooden eggs that resemble Ukrainian designs and some very interesting animal-shaped clay whistles that “toot” when you blow into them. 

 

I hope that these students continue their work beyond what is necessary for school as I can see that there is a lot of natural talent and true potential among these children.  With a great teacher like Robert Moler they have been given the opportunity to learn in a very artistically charged environment.  If the students that have exhibited at the Community Arts Center in the past year or so continue to develop their skills and knowledge of the arts, Danville has a great generation of artists lining up for the not too distant future.

 

“April Showers…” Digital Photography by Susan Black

 

You would not guess that Susan Black is a beginning photographer by looking at her images – macro close-ups of every type of flower from the most exotic orchid to the most common wildflower.  Even though she has only been working at her art for a few years now, she has thousands of images stored away on her hard drive.  Susan strikes me as one of those photographers that is also a collector.  Rather than picking flowers and putting them in a vase or pressing their petals between the pages of an outdated phone book, Susan captures them in her camera – alive and vibrant.  She has told me about how her obsession with floral imagery has gotten her into trouble from time to time as she will sometimes take photos of plants outside of stores in the home/garden section.  I’m not quite sure why anyone would take offense to this small action, perhaps they think she is a corporate spy snapping competitive prices rather than memorable photographs.  She takes trips and visits floral conservatories with the intent of capturing the perfect image.  Susan is always prepared with her camera on her, “at all times.”  She often stops on the roadside when a particular subject captures her attention.  I think that Susan’s work could best be described as floral portraiture because the close-up angle that she achieves on most of the flowers appears to be an attempt to capture the “face” of each species.  Some of my favorite images in her exhibit appear as if the picture were taken in very low light with the flash illuminating the petals as the background fades away.  In a time when photographers often give into the temptation to over-edit their work, Susan does very little to alter the images, usually only bumping up contrast and color when necessary.  In fact, I believe that she is only using the software that came with her camera to get her images into their finished state.  I feel that Susan is definitely a photographer to watch as she seems to have found her niche – something that usually takes photographers many years and several thousand images to find.  Look for Susan’s (very affordable) work in our gift shop after the exhibit.  We hope to be able to keep a rotating stock of images that we can update often, so check in from time to time to see what we have available.

 

Thanks,

Brandon Long

Executive Director

Community Arts Center

MARCH EXHIBIT REVIEW: McGrath, Kernen, and Lampe

At the Community Arts Center, March was a whirlwind month– blowing by so quickly I was left wondering where it went.  Usually I post these blogs within the month of the exhibit and if you’re looking at the date on this one, you might notice it is a bit late.  So I guess this is a recap of March’s exhibits.  The exhibits in March were quite diverse, each one dramatically different from the other and equally interesting – So I’ll give a brief review of each.

 

Quiet Places – Landscapes by Dan McGrath

 

“After the Harvest” by Dan McGrath

 

Dan McGrath is an excellent oil painter out of Lexington, Kentucky who specializes in realism.  Although this particular exhibit focuses on landscapes there are a couple of paintings in the show that also hint at Dan’s other loves- still life and equine art.  A plein aire painter, Dan’s work captures the essence of each location, to make the viewer feel as if they are there on location with the artist.  One can tell from looking at Dan’s work that this is an artist that has studied painting and composition at length, although he has only been painting professionally for around six years.  Interesting composition choices makes his work stand out from your average landscape.  In Slope, treetops and clouds appear to mimic and compliment the shapes and textures of the other, while shadows of clouds cross the foreground to allow the viewer a gradual transition into the painting.  In another work, Blowing Snow, we are treated to a somewhat unconventional composition, that breaks the rule of thirds (common composition in which the bottom third of the painting is the foreground, the middle third is the background, and the top third is the sky) to great effect.  A large white country house looms far in the distance across a winter field, sitting a little lower in the composition than one would usually expect – allowing the cold winter sky to occupy and dominate the mood of most of the painting.  This unusual composition makes the viewer feel as if they are actually standing in the field, approaching the house.  The cold sky and fields of the painting make the house look all the more comforting.  The painting I have chosen to represent Dan’s work on this blog is After the Harvest, which he also chose to send out on the postcards advertising the exhibit’s opening.  This painting features a vineyard in the foreground, the perspective of which leads the viewer’s eye toward the background where the autumn horizon, ablaze with the colors of the season, mirrors the tones and textures found in the grapevines.  It is well balanced compositions such as this that really set Dan’s work apart.  You can see more of Dan’s work at his website at http://home.insightbb.com/~danmcgra/index.htm.

 

 

Cathedrals – Sculptures by Elizabeth Kernen

 

“St. FinBarrs Cathedral, Cork, Ireland” by Elizabeth Kernen

 

Elizabeth Kernen was Elizabeth Taylor’s stand-in for the movie Raintree County when it was filmed in Danville some 50 years ago.  Not only does she look very similar to Elizabeth Taylor to this day, she was also married to a man with the last name Taylor at one time – making Elizabeth Taylor’s stand-in none other than . . . Elizabeth Taylor.  It is unusual, for certain.  I wasn’t aware that Mrs. Kernen was an artist until just a few months ago when I was told about these amazing cathedrals that she had made.  When I went to check them out, I was surprised at the level of detail and charm that each of these miniatures  held.  The best part (and my favorite part) is that the cathedrals were made out of nothing more than cardboard and other found materials, or as Elizabeth calls it, “junk.”  Everything from pine cones, styrofoam bowls, wind chimes, rocks, and spools were used to make replicas of twelve cathedrals from around the world.  Cathedrals from Ireland, Greece, Japan, and Africa (to name a few) were represented.  From a distance the cardboard replicas look like actual buildings, creating the illusion that our gallery has been somehow transformed into a small city.

 

 

Staying Centred- Glass Forms by Jeremy Lampe

 

“Behavioral Problems” by Jeremy Lampe

 

Jeremy Lampe has been in Danville since last August, serving as Centre College’s Graduate Assistant in the art department.  As he was working in the program, he also got the chance to make a lot of art and focus on his craft.  Almost all of the 30+ pieces in his exhibit at the Community Arts Center were made during his time at Centre – hence the name, “Staying Centred.”  Jeremy’s work is an interesting mixture of glass, ceramics, and found objects.  He likes to focus his work on what he calls, “Industrial Castoffs” – objects that once held a degree of functionality, but are no longer used.  Most glass artists tend to focus on the beauty of the medium, making the most out of the transparency and almost liquid nature of the glass.  Jeremy’s work tends to lean more toward organic or biological forms, with pieces resembling microorganisms or parasites – although each piece is beautiful in its own right, if you were to encounter it in the real world as a living being, you might not be sure to squash it like a bug or keep it as a pet.  With as many pieces as Jeremy had in the exhibit, the show had a tendency to look like an invasion of glass creatures.  Instead of just being displayed on pedestals as ordinary sculptures, the artist arranged the work so that pieces were hanging from the walls, basking in sunlight, cavorting on windowsills, and some known as “Donut Walkers” precariously perched on a lattice divider in the middle of the room.  One of the more interesting aspects of Lampe’s work is his ability to switch between ceramics and glass – often in the same piece.  It is not unusual to see one of his pieces be half ceramic and half glass.  One particular work, Behave, looks as if the glass portion is emerging from a ceramic cocoon.  The strongest element of this exhibit is the apparent effortlessness of the pieces,  each looking as if it were something that should have already existed somewhere in some form.  The mark of a true artist is the artist that makes the work look easy.  I’m sure that each of the pieces were quite labor intensive in both design and execution, but they all look as if they just became into existence.  I also appreciate the artist’s use of lo-tech solutions and found objects.  In this exhibit, it was very difficult to identify what elements of the work were created by the artist and which were applied as found objects.  The found objects in Lampe’s work do not call attention to themselves.  They exist as a part of the work rather than the basis or the focal point of the work itself.  Jeremy’s work is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before and I’m sure he has a great career ahead of himself.  I’ve attached a couple of Youtube videos of Lampe, shot by Jennifer Brummett at the Advocate Messenger News here in Danville.  They should give you a greater insight into the artist and his process.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9mirVeAktI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yhllbTPL3c

Thanks,

 

Brandon Long

Executive Director

Community Arts Center

 

 

 

February Exhibit Review: Help Yourself, paintings by Lori Larusso

“Help Yourself” by Lori Larusso. 2007.

 

Paintings of thick delicious pastries line the walls of the Grand Hall at the Community Arts Center this month.  Cupcakes, sugar cookie bunnies with candy eyes, menacing jack-o-lantern styled desserts line a tray, threatening to consume the viewer.  On another wall in the same gallery, a different series of work paintings represent “threat” with bears getting a little closer to a patio than one would like and a rattlesnake warming itself on what appears to be a back porch. 

Lori Larusso’s work is about contradictions in our present systems of belief.  While the two bodies of work represented in the exhibit seem to be at odds with each other, they actually relate quite well when one stops to contemplate as to how the work relates to the theme of contradiction.  In the series of delicious desserts, Lori’s artist statement reads, “As a consumer society, we tend to indulge in petty temporary distractions to remain sane in a complicated, contradictory world.”  As an artist, Lori is offering the viewer a sense of escapism and entertainment.  In today’s world, Martha Stewart, Rachel Ray, and Emeril are celebrities, cooking on television for an at home audience that can never taste the dishes being prepared.  In that same manner, I feel that Lori is baking cakes for the viewer, serving up thick slices of pie that we can never consume.  In a way, it is a temptation for the viewer to want to know what the painting tastes like, to know what the texture of the icing on the cake would feel like – only to snap back to reality like those old Warner Brothers cartoons where a character finds themselves diving into an oasis, swimming the backstroke, and eating sand in what was only a mirage.  That delicious cupcake is only enamel on plywood. These paintings are intended as a getaway – a vacation for the eyes.  They also serve as a warning that things aren’t as they seem.  In this series of paintings, dark shadows often eclipse the surface of the dishes being offered, suggesting the ominous threat that the viewer has to the well being of the existence of the cookies.  In one painting, titled, “Help Yourself,” the shadow of what appears to be a hand reaches for animal shaped cookies.  The eyes of the rabbit shaped forms nearest the grasp of the unseen hand appear much larger than the rest of the cookies.  In a moment of fear, the rabbits seem to be saying, “No, not yet!”

In the series of paintings representing threats, perhaps the viewer is seen as the delicious dessert.  As a pair of bears approach a patio, they may be eying the viewer as a man shaped cookie.  Although the bears appear rather harmless and relaxed, we can’t help but feel threatened by their presence in an otherwise serene landscape.  In the foreground, a chair and cushions are surrounded by a gently curved wall and a well-placed carefully landscaped tree.  These details seem to suggest that the viewer is within an area of comfort, a safe area reserved for quiet time enjoying nature.  The bears tend to represent the truest form of nature, the part that we somehow can’t manage to tame – threatening our leisure.  It seems to suggest that even though we intend to enjoy the outdoors, we intend to enjoy the version of the outdoors that we have created.  We plan to enjoy our preened, landscaped back porch in the mountains oblivious to our real surroundings.  These paintings tend to focus on the contrast between leisure and exterior threats.  In the modern world, we don’t often have to face real threats to our existence.  We face threats like mortgage rates and stock market fluctuations, but how often do we have to square off with a bear or rattlesnake?  The two paintings of this series in the exhibit are actually titled, “Exterior Threat Study,” a clever name suggesting that the threat is both outdoors, outside of the self, and outside of our control.  In both paintings, the animals that are actually the “threat” appear to be at ease.  The bear is ambling about with its cub, the rattlesnake appears to be basking in the sun.  There is nothing in these paintings to suggest that the viewer is directly in harm’s way, but our preconceptions of these animals as “dangerous” tend to set off alarms in our subconscious. 

Lori’s work has a very high degree of personal style in both technique and image selection.  In each of the works, Larusso uses very hard edged shapes to define the images.  The works have a very graphic-based feel because most of the layers used to create the images are self contained in their color – that is that they don’t vary within each individual shape, almost like a paint-by-number painting.  Each color has its very own specific boundaries.  Created from enamel and acrylic paint, it appears as if the layers of paint are thick enough to peel off the surface of the painting.  There are a few areas in shadows where subtle blending serves the purpose of making the more hard edged sections pop out even more, and the effect is used very sparingly with great effect.  There are also several works in the exhibit that take advantage of the differences between gloss and matte paints.  Very glossy enamel may be used on one section of a painting while another may get an entirely flat treatment.  The piece that uses this most effectively is “Sweet Escape.”  In this work, a tray of bunny shaped cookies (painted in a very flat paint) resides on the upper left half of the painting.  The very glossy enameled violet background is interrupted in a very subtle manner by flat cut-out images of the bunny cookies painted in the same violet tones, appearing to flee from the surface of the painting.  I’m fairly certain that the result may not photograph convincingly well, but to see the painting in a gallery under just the right lights, it appears as if ghost images are exiting the surface. 

Intrigued by the images used in the paintings, I asked Lori where she comes up with the ideas for her compositions.  Apparently, the imagery for the dessert series comes from vintage cookbooks.  You know, the type where color photography is used in almost a cartoon manner.  When Technicolor came along, you could tell that photographers and printers went wild with it.  If strawberries were red, you can bet that they were reproduced in the most fire engine red available.  Because the colors are so strong and varied from her usual palette, Lori works from black and white reproductions of the images, changing the colors as she sees fit.  She also uses old encyclopedias (some of my favorite source material) for her work.  When looking at Lori’s work, one can tell that she has an interest in recreating a certain vintage vibe that is popular among contemporary painters.  I often wonder if the appeal of vintage or retro imagery stems from the perception of the media of that era by my generation.  In my mind, looking back on The Andy Griffith Show or I Love Lucy, it seems that evil, fear, and anxiety simply did not exist.  Of course, all of these things existed; it just was not represented in the media to any great extent.  To an artist focusing on the concept of contradiction, one of the greatest examples can be found in how people have decided to present their culture in both the past and the present.  In the past, the news glossed over and generalized current events, offering a very broad and usually positive view of the world.  Now with user created content available all over the web, from Myspace to Youtube, anyone can show their own version of events to any level of detail.  Some of it’s true, some of it’s false, and most of it is someone’s version of the truth to be agreed upon or to be disputed.  Perhaps Lori’s use of vintage imagery is a way to reference a time when events and images were passed through a certain level of scrutiny, a certain level of filtering to ensure a uniform presentation across all media – where all cakes looked similar, where all strawberries were the same color, where everyone could help themselves. 

Lori Larusso’s exhibit, titled, “Help Yourself,” will be on display throughout the month of February (2008) at the Community Arts Center on the corner of Fourth and Main in Danville, Kentucky.  Be sure to check out Lori’s website at www.lorilarusso.com.

  Thanks for reading,

Brandon Long

Executive Director

Community Arts Center

January Exhibit Review: Quilt Shows

At the Community Arts Center in Danville, Kentucky, January is usually a cold and somewhat slow month as can be expected with the conclusion of month after month of holidays from October to December.  As the temperatures began to drop, the Arts Center turned its focus to a warmer form of art – quilts.  All of the exhibits during the month featured the work of some of Danville and Boyle County’s finest quilters with work from the Crazy Quilters Guild and Dolores Fegan.

The Crazy Quilters Guild (a group of quilters who do not necessarily make the more free-form stylized “Crazy Quilts”) exhibited in two of the Arts Center’s three galleries.  The Grand Hall mainly featured “Challenge Quilts” and the smaller Studio 2 gallery featured a variety of work by this group.  As the group doesn’t focus on creating “crazy quilts,” I suppose that their name somehow reflects their emotional state.  I have met these ladies and wouldn’t consider them to be crazy at all; rather they are very dedicated artists to their field.  It seems that the group really enjoys the company of one another and that they have had a very successful start since beginning in 2006 as a part of the Boyle County Homemakers.  Their exhibit featured work from very experienced quilters as well as at least one artist who was displaying the first quilt that she has ever created.

The Crazy Quilters exhibit in the Grand Hall featured what the group calls “Challenge Quilts.”  These quilts are created within the group by a set of rules established by a group member.  Challenges from both 2006 and 2007 were on display.  The 2006 challenge was to create a fish-themed quilt.  It is apparent that the group enjoyed the challenge and came up with a variety of creative spins to put on the theme.  One quilt, Woodland Fish, by Teresa Martin featured a woodland scene created with very simple geometric designs that featured a log cabin, trees, and a small pond with several fish within its borders.  Maybe it’s the limits of my generation, but this quilt reminded me of early computer games such as the Oregon Trail.  Quite popular back in the true floppy disk days (when the disks were actually floppy), there was one part of the adventure where the player got the opportunity hunt pixelated wildlife of the western plains among a similarly styled geometric landscape.  This quilt features the same angle of view, an almost three quarters birds eye view of the scene.  Another fish challenge quilt, Something’s Fishy, by Katie Fowler features several button-eyed fish in profile, with three dimensional fins that “flap” off of the surface, and what appear to be actual small fly fishing lures dangling before the open mouths of the fish.  In 2007, the Crazy Quilters were challenged to create a quilt using a specific lime green patterned fabric.  This fabric was not the most subtle color, so the results of this challenge tend to be very bright and lively.  A piece by Suzanne Brown, Froggie Chaos (pictured below), features a handmade checkerboard pattern that gives the illusion of three dimensions while frogs cut from patterned fabric spill onto a psychedelic blend of shapes and color, making me wonder if the supposed mind altering effects of licking toads might be a reference point for this work. 

Froggie Chaos by Suzanne Brown

Now I’m not saying that the Crazy Quilters go around popping frogs in their mouths, it was just a reference that came to mind when viewing the work.  Another work that made good use of the patterned fabric was Kentucky Challenge by Audrey Cameron.  This piece was one of the more subtle uses of the bright green fabric and featured a nice palette of color that complimented the challenge fabric without drawing too much obvious attention to it.  In Studio 2, the Crazy Quilters got a chance to show what they can do outside of the limitations of the Challenge Quilts.  Work in this gallery ranged from contemporary landscape themed quilts, to a quilted jacket, to a quilt built on a Civil War era pattern.

The Gallery upstairs featured work by Dolores Fegan, a quilter specializing in art quilts, quilts that aren’t necessarily intended to be used as bed coverings in the traditional sense.  Art Quilts are meant to be displayed and viewed as art much like a painting on a wall, except instead of paintings on a canvas, they are made of fabric.  Art quilts have become quite a spectacle recently as more quilters are becoming known as artists.  I think that it is important that all quilters are known as artists in the sense that they are contributing to the culture with their work.  The design and concept of art quilts, and the fact that most quilt artists use no specific pre-existing patterns make art quilts stand out more as an individualistic art form whereas traditional quilts often reflect a sense of time and place among a group of artists.

The sheer amount of work that Dolores puts into each quilt makes an immediate impression on the viewer.  If each quilt only consisted of white fabric and white thread, the amount of care and labor put into the layout of the stitches and sections of cloth would be enough for them to work as a great piece of art.  Luckily, for the viewer Dolores’ work contains a great variety of both color and pattern to make each section of a quilt stand out among the others.  For example, a quilt featuring a landscape would feature green, densely patterned fabric to look as if it were grass or brush, while loosely patterned brown earth tones would be used to represent sections of dirt in the quilt.  One such quilt, “Melody of the Plains,” the artist even goes as far as to use a larger textured pattern near the foreground of the quilt, while the background uses a tighter pattern to give the illusion of atmospheric perspective – the appearance that the objects in the background fade into the distance.  One of the most impressive aspects of Dolores’ work is that rather than taking the easy way out, she isn’t afraid to do a lot of hard work to make the quilts stand out.  For example, in the quilt featuring dancing chickens “Poultry in Motion,” she stitches metallic thread onto a patterned fabric that already resembles chicken wire.  The result is astounding in that the thread catches and reflects the light to look exactly like chicken wire should.  The centerpiece of Fegan’s exhibit was a very large quilt installation, “Women of the Bible.”

This quilt features sixteen small art quilts featuring various women of the Bible chained together to form a massive fourteen by seven foot installation. Each of the smaller quilts features a haiku about the biblical character.  If the viewer has difficulty in figuring out the character being referenced, they can scan the surface of the quilt for what I call a “cheat.”  The name of the woman is stitched into the canvas in a very inconspicuous place.  You have to really look closely in order to find some of the names.  Finding the names of the women becomes almost like a game of hidden objects to the viewer.  At the center of the installation is a large, shapely representation of a woman.  A heart is stitched onto her chest, and the names of nearly all of the women in the Bible form a hand-stitched trail around the figure, starting with Eve at the center of the heart.  Just the figure of the woman would be sufficient to stand alone as one of those, “Wow, look at that” moments.

Women of the Bible by Dolores Fegan. 

  Other details are sometimes more subtle.  In preparation for what is perhaps the most traditional quilt in her exhibit, “Fruit of the Spirit,” Dolores studied papercutting here at the Community Arts Center.  Studying with Debbie Baird, a local artist specializing in cut paper art, Dolores learned how to create repeating patterns on paper.  By adapting this knowledge to fabric, she was able to create very dramatic designs cut into a single piece of cloth.  To explain it doesn’t sound very exciting, but to see this technique in person is amazing.  Pictured below, the quilt features black designs over colorful fabrics.  The undulating black patterns are the sections that are cut from a single piece of cloth.  Other details may have completely passed by the casual viewer.  For example, a fish quilt was stitched with glow in the dark threads on the scales of large, three-dimensional koi to make their scales glow under the right lighting conditions.  It is Dolores’ dedication to exploring new media and her willingness to take on the most difficult challenges that make her work so interesting.

Fruit of the Spirit by Dolores Fegan

The quilt exhibits were a great addition to our winter lineup of shows.  With so many talented quilters in our region, we had great attendance with many enthusiastic viewers.  Many visitors made their first visits to the Arts Center to check out the work of these artists.  As I hoped and suspected, these exhibits drew a new audience to the center.

Thanks for reading,

Brandon Long

Executive Director, Community Arts Center 

  

Remembering Paul Overstreet

“Familiar Scene on the Fork” by Paul Overstreet

Paul Overstreet, truly one of the great local artists in the Boyle County area, died on Christmas Day following a bout with cancer.  He was best known for his paintings of native Kentucky wildlife and local scenery.  Viewing his work from the Danville Art Guild exhibit held at the Community Arts Center this November, I could tell that he was an artist that paid very close attention to detail and that he loved the community that he grew up in.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a painting by Paul that didn’t feature some part of Boyle County in its scenery.  Whether it was Penn’s Store, the Bottoms House at Perryville, or a familiar scene down on the Fork, Paul showed his love for his subjects and his community with every brushstroke.  He will certainly be missed in the Danville/Boyle County arts community.