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September Issue 2005
Turchin Center for the Visual Arts in Boone, NC, Offers Four New Exhibits
Four new exhibitions are being presented at Appalachian State University's Turchin Center for the Visual Arts in Boone, NC. Site-specific sculpture exhibitions by artists Stephen Hendee and Julianne Swartz will be on display in Gallery A and the Carroll Gallery in the center's newly-opened East Wing through Nov. 19, 2005. Also in the East Wing, artist Sheba Sharrow will exhibit paintings in Gallery B (on view through Sept. 17, 2005), and local photography artists Pac McLaurin and Troy Tuttle will display recent works in the Mayer Gallery, through Oct. 1, 2005.
Stephen Hendee was born in Santa Monica, CA, in 1968, and currently lives and works in Newark, NJ. He received his MFA from Stanford University in 1993, and his BFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 1990. Hendee has received numerous awards, including: the Headlands Center for the Arts, New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, the Elizabeth Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Kirin Contemporary Award of Japan, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation. His work has been featured in both solo and group exhibitions. The list of venues that have presented his work includes major institutions such as the Birmingham Museum of Art-Alabama, the New Museum-New York, and the Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris Gallery-New York.
Hendee's exhibit, entitled, The zombies stayed home last night and did nothing., is a site-specific installation sculpture that was designed with the building plans for reference. He worked within a framework of ideas, but with very few preconceived, specific designs. His installation in Gallery A will depict an environmental scene describing a graveyard. Hendee describes his project as "aesthetic accumulations of western pediment/crypt structures and eastern high-density cemeteries." The project's title introduces humor, but also speaks to the eeriness often associated with memorial sites. This work will investigate the process of accumulation of man-made architectural forms related to monuments. It will affect the visitor's experience through the added layer of his personal and societal contexts associated with memorializing our ancestors.
Julianne Swartz was born in Phoenix, AZ, in 1967, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her MFA from Bard College, Annandale-on Hudson, NY, and her BFA from the University of Arizona, Tucson. She has received numerous awards, including: Art Omi International Artists Colony, Public Art Fund of New York, P.S. 1 Museum, Cite Internationale des Arts-Paris, the Richard Kelly Foundation, Lower East Side Printshop, and the New York Foundation for the arts. Swartz is represented by Josee Bienvenu Gallery-New York and has exhibited at major institutions such as the New Museum of Contemporary Art-New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art-New York, Muller Dechiara Gallery-Berlin, and P.S. 1 Institute for Contemporary Art-Brooklyn.
Like Hendee, Swartz will install a site-specific sculpture. Unlike Hendee, however, Swartz has no prior introduction to the space in which she will install her project. Her project, which is untitled, will feature components drawn directly from her reaction to the physical construction of the space, the vistas from the space, and the natural light from windows on one side of the space. Swartz will employ materials that will work with the unique qualities of the Carroll Gallery, which was designed as a natural light area, and features a wall of windows open to the downtown and campus communities, cement floors and open ductwork - in contrast to the finished, hardwood-floored galleries in other areas of the museum.
Hendee and Swartz will create their installations during the first of their two-part residency at Appalachian State University. The artists will complete the second part of their residency on Nov. 5, 2005, when they will serve as keynote speakers for the Tri-State Sculptor's Conference, participate in a discussion session, and then will answer questions regarding their work. The artist residencies and season of sculpture exhibitions are supported by a generous grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Sheba Sharrow was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1926, to working-class, Russian Jewish immigrant parents. She grew up in Chicago, and attended art classes throughout her formative years at the Art Institute. In junior college, Sharrow studied science before committing to the study of art full-time, and in 1948, she graduated from the Art Institute after studying painting with Joseph Hirsch. In 1962, Sharrow completed an MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. She taught art at Millersville State University in Lancaster, PA, for 20 years, all the while exploring and crystallizing her own goals as a painter.
Sharrow's exhibition in the Turchin Center's Gallery B is entitled, Balancing Act, and it is a thoughtful investigation of her personal voice within a larger social and societal context. Her paintings often feature skeletal figures, haunting faces, and muted colors, reflecting the balance of life and death, and interpreting current political events against an historical background.
Pac McLaurin and Troy Tuttle are local photography artists who have long-held ties with Appalachian State University. Their recent works will be on display in the Turchin Center's Mayer Gallery.
The Turchin Center for the Visual Arts is the
largest visual arts center in northwestern North Carolina, Eastern
Tennessee and Southwest Virginia. The center's exhibits focus
on a blend of new and historically important artwork, and feature
works of nationally and internationally renowned artists, as well
as many of the finest artists of the region. In addition to year-round
exhibitions, the center also offers educational programming for
children and adults in its Arnold P. Rosen Family Education Wing.
For more information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings,
call the Center at 828/262-3017 or at (www.turchincenter.org).
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