October Issue 2000
Folk Art Center in Asheville, NC Hosts Two New Exhibitions
The Folk Art Center in Asheville, NC, is featuring two new exhibitions. In the Focus Gallery husband and wife team, Molly Sharp & David Voorhees, will be exhibiting their work through Nov. 27. In the Main Gallery newly accepted members of the Southern Highland Craft Guild will show their work in the annual New Members' Exhibition through Nov. 12.
Because the special demands on the professional craftsperson make for long hours in the studio, days on the road, and periods of intense creativity, craftspeople sometimes find their best partners to be those who also work in the craft community. The Focus Gallery at the Folk Art Center has had several exhibitions of couples who are both active Guild members, and share a life together. Following in that manner Molly Sharp's jewelry designs will be on exhibit beside her husband David Voorhees' ceramic work. Sharp and Voorhees live in Flat Rock, NC.
Sharp has been interested in making jewelry since the mid-1970s. While raising her children twenty-five years ago, she took a basic metalsmithing course, and along with learning the basics she discovered something she wanted to keep doing. Her skills developed with more classes and workshops where she studied under some of the country's most respected jewelers. By the early nineties, after her kids were grown, she began moving into full-time work, doing professional craft shows and observing the evolution of a unique style. While taking a course at Penland School of Craft in the mid nineties, at a time when she was planning a move from her Florida home, she met ceramicist David Voorhees. Shortly afterward, she moved to Western NC, and in 1996 joined the Southern Highland Craft Guild.
Her work, which once featured semi-precious stones, has been shifting in the last few years to feature the use of unpolished beach pebbles and small river rocks. Molly gathers these stones, tumbled smooth by years of water currents, and, without changing their natural state, sets them in sterling silver and gold. Her attraction to their variety and sense of antiquity has moved her to incorporate other patterns, textures and patinas to better relate the story of their ancient history.
David Voorhees came south from New England in the early 1970s to study Fine Art at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. It was a natural path for a young man whose parents were both professional painters and encouraged him since childhood to explore art. Learning the basic elements of clay was part of his undergraduate studies, and once he got on a potters' wheel, he knew he had found his calling. As a graduate student at the University of SC and later studying with such notables as David Leach and Don Reitz, Voorhees' work evolved to express a classical style of wheel-thrown and slab-built porcelain. His concentration is on forms of simple, functional elegance.
With his life-long love and talent in fine art, the paint brush is never far away, and with a painter's hand, Voorhees depicts an extraordinary variety of floral images on a porcelain "canvas". These impressionistic blossoms are so true to life in color, shape and mood that one can almost smell the bouquet. It takes a great amount of patience, experimentation and sheer desire to achieve the look which has become his hallmark: the effect of effortless watercolor painting on clay. In 1979, Voorhees joined the Southern Highland Craft Guild, becoming an active participant in the Craft Fairs and shops. His work is found in galleries across the Southeast, and a piece of his work is included in the White House Collection of American Craft. Together with his wife Molly Sharp and other friends, they operate the Hand in Hand Gallery in Flat Rock, NC.
Newly accepted members of the Southern Highland Craft Guild have the opportunity to show their work during their first year in the annual New Members' Exhibition. The combination of two juryings in the past year has brought a record number of acceptances, providing the Guild with more than 60 new members. Open through Nov. 12 in the Center's Main Gallery, this remarkable exhibition contains over 250 pieces, making it the largest New Members' Show in Guild history.
Because it represents the finest work from some of the most accomplished artists in the region, this show offers a rare aggregate of talent from nine states, representing all craft media, including wood, fiber, paper, jewelry, metalsmithing, glass, clay, and mixed media. It's impossible to name each artist individually, but some highlights cannot go without note. Exceptional work by fiber artists, five of whom are quilters, presents a colorful range of expression from contemporary to traditional. Asheville quilter Caroline Manheimer dyes her fabrics in varying saturations of color and pieces them in repeated geometric patterns, setting the colors to a rhythm that flows from pale to dark. Burnsville, NC quilter Alice Wiley depicts life-like mountain scenes in her quilts. One shows a gathering of old-time musicians, intricately appliqued in every detail, with hand-embroidered touches. Another is a portrait of a woman peeling potatoes in a rocking chair; her farmhouse stands in the distance, and the potato peels are lifelike enough to curl out of the quilt!
Fine jewelers have joined the Guild in record numbers and variety. Fifteen percent of the new members are jewelers, making it the largest media category juried this year. From Lilith Eberle's (Spruce Pine, NC) patinaed silver pieces in brilliantly controlled colors, to Dory Brown's (Hot Springs, NC) handmade silver mesh jewelry, new ideas abound in this new group of talent. The mesmerizing circles that move like turning gears by Geoffrey Giles (Canton, NC) astound even other jewelers, who puzzle over his mystifying designs and construction.
Woodworkers show the endless possibilities of styles and function in their medium. William Hines (Greeneville, TN) has revived, with amazing skill, the once-vital tradition of coopering, making barrels by hand. The small piggins on display are works of fine craftsmanship, illustrating when the staves are bound together tightly enough, the lines between them are indistinguishable, appearing as a single piece of wood. Like many of us, there are woodworkers who never want to grow up. With deftness and creativity that children of all ages can appreciate. Russ Jacobsohn (Sparta, TN) makes the finest wooden rocking horses the Guild has ever seen. Horses are just the beginning of what he has rocking, and children aren't the only riders his designs can support. In this show, a delightful Rocking Moose with enormous horns, and an elegant Rocking Swan of burled wood are ready to take their passengers to lands of make-believe. Furniture pieces are another highlight of the wood category, ranging from the rustic twig furniture of Gerald Smith (Berkeley Springs, WV) to the minimalist contemporary chairs of Asheville furniture maker John McDermott.
The clay category brings forth a number of accomplished ceramicists, including several who excel at the challenges of wood firing. Matt Jones (Leicester, NC), Shane Mickey (Knoxville, TN), and Jeff Brown (Gatlinburg, TN) have each developed particular outcomes from the long process of firing with a wood burning kiln. Their choices of form, glazing, and clay body change the way smoke and ash play upon the surface of each unique piece. Nancy Jacobsohn's (Sparta, TN), hand-built, clay horses are straight out of a fantasy. With magical markings and expressions, these hollow, slab-built horses appear to have pranced in from an extraordinary dream.
Several new glass artists have added their pizzazz to the exhibition, presenting both decorative and functional glasswork. Roddy Capers (Asheville, NC) has a strong, recognizable style of richly colored, thick-walled vessels that spread at the top. He cuts the molten glass along the rim, and bends the hot glass at the splits. Joe Nielander (Spruce Pine, NC) also works in bold colors, but his hand-blown vessels often depict images of sportsmen, mountain bikers and roller skaters in relief. In contrast, Edwin Weaver (Hendersonville, NC) makes glasswork small enough to hide in your hand. Miniature fruits and vegetables, and a glass menagerie called the See thru Zoo are on display. Carl Powell's (Asheville) glasswork is not blown or lampworked, but created cold with layers of glass laminates. Stacked on top of each other with wires and other items between each layer, these contemporary pieces give the impression of something suspended in a solid block of glass.
There are several new members in mixed media, like Donald Stevenson (Morganton, NC) who makes miniature replicas of historic southern buildings. It would be amazing enough that these shoebox-sized structures capture every detail down to doorknobs and shingles, or that window panes are made of mica, with painted broom straw for the delicate window framing. To top this, each piece is also made to be a functional bird house, ready to weather the elements and provide shelter for a specific bird species. Harriet Herrick (Black Mountain, NC) similarly amazes viewers with her layered paper images. Hand-cut images are framed with hidden foam between each layer, giving dimension to ethereal, white-on-white images. These sixty new members have taken years to gain control of their chosen medium, working their own expression into it, and perfecting their styles to be worthy of the Guilds standards of craftsmanship and design.
For more info check our NC Institutional Gallery
listings or call 828/298-7928.
Mailing Address: Carolina Arts, P.O. Drawer
427, Bonneau, SC 29431
Telephone, Answering Machine and FAX: 843/825-3408
E-Mail: carolinart@aol.com
Subscriptions are available for $18 a year.
Carolina Arts
is published monthly by Shoestring
Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc.
Copyright© 2000 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston
Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts
from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts
Online, Copyright© 2000 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved
by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use
without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina
Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.