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
Tags: danville, kentucky, learning disabiliities, Autism, Flowers, floral, student, DLDA
