September Issue 2001
Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, NC, Features Works by Robert Lyon, Richard Siegel, Charles Tefft and Lisa Young
Opening at Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, NC, on Sept. 7, the exhibition, Elemental, features the work of sculptor Robert Lyon, painter Richard Siegel, and clay artists Charles Tefft and Lisa Young. The exhibition continues through Nov. 25, 2001.
While the artists' techniques and materials are widely varied, the work shares an elemental quality, resembling or revisiting the forces of nature in the works' creation, visual power, and effect. Today, as a society, we are acutely aware of environmental issues, waking to morning ozone reports and trying to make sense out of the increasingly complex issues of quality of life. Observing the work of these artists helps us reconnect to a more natural world.
Robert Lyon's large mixed media sculptures combine architectural images, abstraction, references to past civilizations, and man's relationship to planet earth. He says, "My recent work does not solely speak about man's achieving dominance over nature, nor is it merely a question of protecting the environment. As an application of the Gaia Principle, we start thinking of ourselves as part of, rather than separate from, the organism Mother Earth, and we can then relate ourselves and our society to the world of nature and the cosmos." Lyon is currently head of the Department of Art at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina.
Richard Siegel's commanding landscapes have been inspired by a lifetime of travel across the country. The spontaneous and intense experience of observing the power of the natural world close-up is translated by Siegel into large elegant watercolor paintings. As a master of a medium which often teases our visual perceptions, the artist creates a world of solidity and fragility--boulders, rushing water, and light--with the illusionist's brush. A Charlotte, NC, resident, Siegel is currently represented by Center of the Earth Gallery, Charlotte; Boston Corporate Art, Boston, Massachusetts; and Post Gallery in Houston, Texas.
Greensboro, NC, potter Charles Tefft uses the potter's wheel the way a painter prepares the canvas. It is after the pots are thrown that the artist says, "I bring them to life; I cut, push, pull, and reshape the pieces. This is at the heart of my work. They present themselves like puzzles, with infinite solutions." No other medium has such a direct relationship to the earth or to man's earliest history. Literally of the earth, clay is dug, shaped, and transformed by fire. The first glazes were formed from the ash that fell on the pots and melted there. Continuing a tradition begun thousands of years ago, Tefft's finished pieces carry the mark of the earth, the hand, and the fire.
Potter Lisa Young recently left a 24-year teaching career at Guilford College in Greensboro, NC, but continues to maintain her studio, Magnolia Street Pottery in Greensboro. Of her work Young says, "I have been making pots for 28 years, and when I touch a pot in process now, I get an immediate, visceral readout about its condition, its water content, its timing, its strengths, and its likelihood of survival. It makes me feel like an alchemist." Young's influence on the work of her former student, Charles Tefft, is measurable even as their work reflects their differences.
For more information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings or call the Center at 704/636-1882.
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