Feature Articles

November Issue 2002

Home Show in Charlotte, NC, Benefits Alexander Children's Center

Three artists are combining their talents to offer you an opportunity to comfortably browse their work in a home setting and benefit a worthwhile charity at the same time. Visual Trilogy will be hosted in the home of Schelly Keefer at 6409 Willow Run Drive (Touchstone neighborhood) on Nov. 15, 4pm-9pm and Nov. 16, 10am-5pm. The show will feature works by Han Cashion, Wil Bosbyshell and Schelly Keefer. A percentage of the proceeds from sales will benefit the Alexander Children's Center, an organization breaking the cycle of abuse and neglect by providing education, support, coping skills and healing, allowing children to return to society with life skills they did not receive at home or school.

Art is not created in or for museums. The home is the first destination of almost every piece. Most paintings are treasures for people and their families. The subjects are often near to our hearts: your garden, a childhood home, the road you and your pony trekked on, or the dog that sat with you on the porch. Others contain passionate subjects: the man or woman you love, your children or a moment of revelation. But it is not all Norman Rockwell, some paintings show the lands and places that you wish to see or have journeyed to. Others just represent the inchoate feelings of the human soul. Abstracts can stand for an emotion or thought, captured in frozen lattices of paint and fabric.

Why should the creative process be seen only in the dead stillness of a museum or gallery? A home is an alternate setting and indeed it is the aim of many artist to get the piece to your home. Imagine how much easier it is to judge how a piece of art can enhance your life when you see it in the proper context, a home show.

Coming to a home show has another great advantage. Art often feels moved from real people, they do not look at their friends and neighbors and see the people who can create beautiful images that 200 hundred years from now, will be admired on the Antique Roadshow 2301. Artists are all around you, and they are as heterogeneous in style and outlook as any other group. At a home show you will meet that artist and realize, "they is us."

Artists love to talk to people about their work, revealing the emotional context of the images. Opportunities to do so are rare. Commercial settings like galleries are't the most conducive for the free exchange of ideas. At a home show, there is a chance to talk, to ask, and enjoy some punch. You are treated to a more relaxed yet more intimate relationship with the painter. This event gives you that chance. We hope that you will take advantage of it and support both the artists and their chosen charity.

A native of Korea, Han Cashion, found her art in her late twenties soon after arriving in the US in 1990. She studied art at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, and participated in various painting seminars. Cashion primarily paints in the abstract using water media on paper and acrylic on canvas. Her paintings convey a unique merging of culture, mystery and strength.

Cashion has received numerous awards for her paintings in national juried exhibitions including California Watercolor Association, Wyoming Watercolor Association, Mississippi Watercolor Society and San Diego International Watercolor Society. She also received grant awards for a Regional Artist Project from the Arts and Science Council in Charlotte in 2000 and for an Artist-in-Residency program from the Vermont Studio Center in VT in 2001.

Wil Bosbyshell uses his international background (partly care of the US Army followed by a juried residency in Hungary) to create work exploring the impressions of humanity on the earth. His architectural work focuses on the interaction between ornate architectural silhouettes and the vast, changing sky behind them. Bosbyshell seeks the deep city shadows seen only at dusk. Jane Grau of the "Charlotte Observer wrote, "Wil has the uncanny ability to infuse life into totally inanimate objects. One hears baroque music in the curves and curlicues of the rococo cupids on a Paris bridge and deep resonance in a dinner bell high above the Smokies" In his primitive works, Bosbyshell paints fires and cave imagery from our collective past in vibrant and dark colors. He is known for his watercolors but has recently concentrated on oils.

Schelly Keefer has won over twenty awards for her artistic efforts in watercolor and pastel, sometimes combining the two media. She's best known for her landscapes, done in styles that vary from Realism to Impressionism. Keefer's work has been featured in the Charlotte Observer, Sanskrit Magazine and the Chronicle of the Horse. Her work will be featured in the art magazine Pastel Journal in its Nov. 2002 issue.

"I paint because I feel compelled to express my feelings and observations about a time, place or person. Images call out to me to capture them on paper. I work to convey to the viewer the essential nature of the subject as it is revealed to me. If one of my paintings expresses the subject to you in a new way, or strikes a chord of recognition in you, then I have succeeded in my role of visual storyteller."

For further information check our NC Commercial Gallery listings, call Schelly Keefer at 704/752-9085 or e-mail at (Schellykeefer@aol.com). All three artists have work viewable at (www.charlotteartists.com). For info about the Alexander Children's Center call Netty Perham at 704/944-6088 or e-mail at (Nperham@Alexandercc.org).

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