| For more information about this article or gallery, please call the gallery phone number listed in the last line of the article, "For more info..." |
November Issue 2005
Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, NC, Offers Exhibitions for Winter Season
Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, NC, opens its winter season with three new exhibitions including: Rituals and Meditations, featuring watercolors by Richard Bolingbroke, on view in the Norvell Gallery; Connexion, featuring fine art prints by Amy Newell and Kristin Rothrock, on view in the Woodson and Osborne Galleries; and the 2005 Artists Invitational Exhibition, featuring works by 11 local and regional artists, on view in the Young people's Gallery. All three exhibits will be on view from Nov. 11 through Jan. 7, 2006.
Richard Bolingbroke's paintings are visual keys that unfold mysteries. Born in Southsea, England, and with an impressive record of exhibitions across the United States, Bolingbroke spent many years in central Asia, years which proved to be very formative both in terms of his painting and spiritual development. The artist now sees his work as a melding of Eastern and Western cultural interests and artistic values. Bolingbroke's use of flat pictorial space exemplifies his interest in Japanese aesthetics, such as the boldly graphic patterns of Japanese kimonos, and contrasts to his use of Western approaches to spatial illusion. He also names Matisse as a major influence, for his use of color and pattern that combines sensuous painting with philosophical concerns.
This duality is echoed in other aspects of Bolingbroke's work; as an artist who pursues true beauty, He asks us to embrace the fact that beauty is a disturbing balance of opposites. The ritualistic nature of the process by which he collects and composes the objects that make up his still life paintings imbues them with the power to delve into the unconscious, an honest place wherein we acknowledge that beauty must include both dark and light, life and death, stability and motion, emptiness and fullness. According to Bolingbroke, "The language that I use expresses meaning that is often hidden, and through the window of the imagination, using process that allow me to connect with my inner reality, these paintings explore some of the paradoxical and magical aspects of life."
The collective prints created by Amy Newell and Kristin Rothrock are the result of a long friendship and many discussions as to the most important common denominator of that relationship. The two artists met at the University of Wisconsin, Madison where they both received their MFA in Printmaking. Newell currently lives and works in Madison, while Rothrock has relocated to Charlotte, where she is a lecturer at the University of North Carolina Charlotte. Since there is a distance of over 700 miles between the artists, the collaboration began as a "round robin" through the mail as they discovered that the aspect of their friendship that seemed to stand out was humor. Newell and Rothrock collected a series of knock-knock jokes and determined a size for the prints. The pieces circulated through the mail, growing in complexity of mark-making and meaning as they passed between the two artists. The exchange culminated at Winnebago Studios in Madison, where the final prints were made. Over fifty-seven collages resulted from this collaboration, proving that "inspiration springs from many places and that no place is too silly." Also on display is a series of 20 prints called Four Fold from a collaboration between Amy Newell and Liz Roth. This series, created using a combination of letterpress, lithography, collage, watercolor and colored pencil, underscores the omnipresence and importance of folding.
The 2005 Artists Invitational Exhibition and Sale, featured in the Young People's Gallery, will showcase the work of 11 North Carolina Artists. Exhibitors include hand-made ceramics by Cathy Kiffney, paintings by Lou Murphy, Mark Farris and Libby Bentley, pottery by Ron Slack and Anne Jorgensen, prints by Don Jorgenson, photographs by Sean Myers, textiles and jewelry by Maia Smith, sculpture by David Edgar and woodturning by Charles Farrar. Work is priced from $20 to $1000 and may be removed at the time of purchase for holiday gift giving. All sales benefit the educational programs at Waterworks and support these fine regional artists.
For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Center at 704/636-1882 or at (www.waterworks.org).
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing
Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc.
Copyright© 2005 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© 2005 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.