Feature Articles


September Issue 2000

An Artist Leaps Into Creativity: 366 Days At Christa Faut Gallery in Cornelius, NC

During this millennial year with its gift of one extra day, a North Carolina artist leapt into the creative unknown and returned with a series of paintings chronicling a daring journey through the calendar. To explore a personal artistic frontier. Elizabeth Bradford Millsaps chose to greet each day demanding a new image to serve as the inspiration for that day's work. When her series, 366Days, opens on Sept. 8 at The Christa Faut Gallery in Cornelius, NC, the twelve-month tapestry of paintings will be displayed together for the first, and perhaps the last, time. The exhibit will be on view through Oct. 9.

"Individually they are exquisite; together, the effect is extraordinary," said gallery owner Christa Faut. "When Elizabeth first told me about her project, I couldn't imagine it. Now that I have seen it, I can't wait to see it installed in the gallery."

With each six-inch plywood panel, one begun every day from July 31, 1999 to July 30, 2000, Millsaps has captured a moment - of color, shape, sensibility, nature, mysticism - sometimes all at once. Laid end-to-end, the panels would cover more than half a football field. "Exhibited in one gallery space, the impact will be very powerful," said Faut. "And because of this artist's commitment to honesty in her work, it is also very revealing."

Why undertake such a challenge? "About a year ago it became suddenly important to me to break the hold of habit on my painting." said Millsaps, an artist who has spent her career chronicling the shift in the landscape from rural to urban. "As a way to force myself to stretch, to learn, and to explore new territory, I began a series of paintings designed to take me on a journey."

"Part of the joy of the project was not knowing in advance what I would be taught," Millsaps said. "... like a meditation it became a task of listening, waiting to receive, while actively training myself to focus."

Her friend and fellow artist Herb Jackson, 1999 recipient of the North Carolina Award, sees 366 Days as an affirmation of the artistic process.

Millsaps studied at the University of North Carolina and Davidson College and is represented in corporate and private collections all over the United States. She was recently included in the Art in Embassies program, a project to place representative work by American artists in embassies around the world. She has had many solo exhibitions, including shows at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and at Davidson College, as well as five previous solo exhibitions at The Christa Faut Gallery.

Millsaps' work focuses on intricate formal patterns found in nature and on the experience of color, and ranges from small and intimate to large scale. Her medium is acrylic on canvas or board. Though representative in nature, Millsaps' paintings have a strong connection to the traditions of abstraction, and show as well the influence of Pattern and Decoration and Pop Art.

What did she learn in these 366 days of creative demands?

"Initially I had believed that the challenge would be finding an interesting idea for each day. It has evolved, however, as a more intimate reflection on the personal and material signifiers of my life. More than developing an idea, I found myself looking for the experience, or observation, that caused in me the right-feeling energy," Millsaps said. "Often the scope of the ideas involved came to parallel the physical scale of the work. Because of the size I found the work more inclined to be confessional, intimate and of the moment."

"Many days the work took a microscopic view of objects that happened to be in my path. Other days the idea was large and mysterious and defied the scale of the support," she continued. "When I think about the precedents that drove this project, the image that most often comes to mind is the patchwork quilt. The kind of work ethic that generations of women have exhibited in their quilting reminded me of my own work. The notion of many square modules coming together to create a mantle that wraps up a year of a life is not unlike the making of a quilt."

Finally, the artist spoke of what she takes forward from her leap into 366 days of discovery and creation: "From this project I will carry a sense of the opulence of my life... I carry as well the visceral experience of constancy, which I expected to feel like a burden, but which instead was transforming."

For further information check our NC Commercial Gallery listings or call 704/892-5312.

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