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August Issue 2010
Harvey B. Gantt
Center in Charlotte, NC, Features Works by Louis Delsarte, Charles
Farrar, and Larry Lebby
The Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts & Culture in Charlotte, NC, is presenting the exhibit, Romancing the Eye: Louis Delsarte, Charles Farrar, and Larry Lebby, on view in the Center's Gallery West through Sept. 3, 2010.
Exhibiting for the first time together, three outstanding visual artists, Louis Delsarte, Larry Lebby, and Charles Farrar will romance your visual perception and artistic emotions. Each artist has his own distinct artistic ability in creating tantalizing artwork. Delsarte is inspired by memories from the past while using texture, color and form to create an abstraction of space which gives his images light; Lebby has perfected the technique of dry-brush watercolor which gives his paintings a lightness and buoyancy; and Farrar uses the properties of wood to summon forth the classical and non-classical forms of finely finished surfaces while invoking the processes once used by master carvers from Sub-Saharan Africa and Egyptians in North Africa.
Described as a figurative
painter of dream-like compositions, Louis Delsarte emerged onto
the art scene more than thirty five years ago as a painter. Using
texture, abstraction, paints, ebony pencil and mixed media, Delsarte
takes the viewer to the depths of his own experiences and imagination.
Delsarte was born in Brooklyn NY, in 1944. He earned a BFA from
Pratt institute in 1977. He has been honored as artist in residence
at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Howard University, Metropolitan
Museum of Art, NY, Bob Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, NY, Towson
University in MD, The Experimental Printmaking Institute at Lafayette
College, Arts Exchange in Atlanta, GA, Brandywine Printmaking
Workshop in Washington, DC, and The Faculty Resource Network at
New York University.
Larry Francis Lebby
developed and honed his artistic skills at Allen University in
Columbia, SC, and the University of South Carolina, where he earned
a BA in 1973 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1976. In 1973,
USC professors Drs. John and Grace Jordan McFadden, who were early
collectors of his artworks, sponsored his first solo show. Since
then his work has been displayed throughout the United States
in places such as the White House, the Smithsonian Institute,
the United Nations and the United States Senate. In 1989, his
work was displayed at the Vatican in Rome.
Lebby's work is included in the private collections of numerous
entertainers such as: Eddie Murphy, Gregory Peck, James Earl Jones,
Roberta Flack and politicians Senator Strom Thurmond and the former
mayor of Atlanta Andrew Young. His portraits of noted South Carolina
educator and theologian Dr. Benjamin Mays and civil rights advocate
Modjeska Simpkins hang in the South Carolina State House. Lebby's
southern roots are evident in many of his works especially his
paintings of the people, the architecture and the landscape of
his native South Carolina.
Charles Farrar
Charles Farrar is currently a resident of Concord, NC, and his passion for working with woods is demonstrated in the final product.
Farrar offered the following
statement about his work, "My fascination with the many properties
of wood began when I was a child growing up in Southern Virginia. I
am happiest when creating from found woods that feature irregular
grain patterns, knots, burls or voids, such that the finished
work provokes a different commentary."
"I work using a custom built Nichols lathe and tools for
the different stages of turning; bark removal, shaping, hollowing,
etc. Ecological sensibility prevents my harvesting living
trees solely for the purpose of turning vessels. However, once
a blank of wood is selected and experience has helped me see inside
it, I begin the process of unlocking the beauty within."
Farrar adds, "Some of my vessels are classical forms with
finely finished surfaces. Others have hand carved, textured
or pigmented surfaces. I'm often reminded of my ancestors when
I embellish the surface of a piece. While Sub-Saharan Africans
were master carvers, it was the Egyptians in North Africa who
gave to the world the process of turning wood using a lathe as
early as the time of the great pyramids."
For further information
check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, or call the Center
at 704/547-3700 or visit (www.ganttcenter.org).
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