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December Issue 2003
Folk Art Center in Asheville, NC, Features Works by Bob Wagar and Caroline Manheimer
Ceramist Bob Wagar and fiber artist Caroline Manheimer will be featured in the rotating Focus Gallery at the Blue Ridge Parkway's Folk Art Center in Asheville, NC. The exhibition will remain on view through Jan. 6, 2004. Wagar's complex, sculptural figures and Manheimer's colorful, playful quilts are an excellent complement and highlight once again the high quality of workmanship that is the standard for Southern Highland Craft Guild members.
Wagar became a serious ceramics student as a degree candidate at the State Academy of Applied Arts in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1971. He studied at Knox College in Galesburg, IL, and earned his MFA from Northern Illinois University. In 1974, Wagar rented a pottery shack in Kentucky and embarked on a career as a production potter that endured for 26 years. In 2000, he devoted himself to sculptural ceramics.
Wagar's current work consists of what he calls "salt-fired original pictures" or "Urbilder," a German word meaning "root picture." These root pictures are both the goal and the inspiration for Wagar's work. His ceramic figures are garbed in unfamiliar, medieval-looking armor created by pinching together coils and slabs of clay. These figures are then decorated with slips, stains and glazes and are crowned with wheel-thrown tops. Wagar states, "My sculptures are not representational images of actual persons but dream images of we who as one walk barefoot up a winter road."
Wagar taught at the Black Hawk Mountain School of Art in Black Hawk, CO, the University of Ohio at Portsmouth, the University of North Carolina, Asheville and the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. Born in Chicago, Wagar has lived in Asheville since 1975.
Adorning the walls of the Focus Gallery will be stunning, colorful quilts created by Caroline Manheimer. This new body of work builds on her previous experiments with the traditional quilt pattern 'drunkard's path.' She began to push the boundaries of her designs by introducing stripes and lines into her circular shapes, changing, she says, "the look and the dynamic - no longer were they as calm or peaceful as previous color progressions."
And, Manheimer's use of color is stunning. Each piece of cloth used in her quilts starts as white and is dyed at least two times and often more. Some is silk screened, monoprinted or subjected to a resist technique such as shibori or simple tie-dye methods. Often she will discharge color to create a pattern or graphic design and then will over-dye the cloth. She uses a razor to cut the cloth freehand without the use of any guides or templates, lending a gestural quality to the shapes and designs. Throughout the entire process, she is able to create subtle unity for each piece.
Manheimer began tie-dyeing her curtains in the 60's and continued to dye fabric and to study while pursuing a library career and raising a family. She hopes that the humor and playfulness of her new pieces will amuse rather than mystify viewers.
For more information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the center at 828/298-7928 or on the web
at (www.southemhighlandguild.org).
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