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December Issue
2010
Burroughs-Chapin Art Museum in Myrtle
Beach, SC, Offers Works by Alex Powers & Treelee MacAnn
The Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin
Art Museum in Myrtle Beach, SC, is presenting two new exhibits
including: Alex Powers: Inquiries, an exhibit which marks
the 40th anniversary of nationally recognized artist, teacher
and juror Alex Powers' life as a painter, on view through Jan.
9, 2011, and Treelee MacAnn: Looking Out, Looking In, on
view through Dec. 30, 2010.
Alex Powers: Inquiries features 41 thought-provoking works
created over the past 20 years. Using gouache, charcoal, pastel
and sometimes collage, Powers' loose realism combines an emphasis
on drawing with an awareness of the art of our times.
Born in 1940 the son of a Virginia coal miner, Powers' journey as an artist did not start young. He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and began working as a math teacher at a non-graded high school near Cape Kennedy and later went on to Cape Kennedy to be a computer programmer. At the age of 27, Powers began painting. He sat in on local classes in ceramics, drawing and painting and attended art schools in Florida, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut for drawing and painting. In 1968 he took a job teaching art at a junior high school in Greensboro, NC. Powers moved to Myrtle Beach in 1969 where he sold his charcoal paintings on the sidewalks for $4 and began teaching art in his local studio.
Powers has won several national juried exhibition best-of-show awards including one from the American Watercolor Society, New York, NY, 1997 and the San Diego Watercolor Society International Juried Exhibition, 2002. In 1989, Powers authored a book Painting People in Watercolor: A Design Approach. This book was in print for 17 years.
"Powers' work appears disarmingly straightforward: words to read, albeit moving in and out of legibility; expressive and sometimes identifiable faces; even generous wall texts," says Elizabeth Howie, Assistant Professor of Art History at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, SC. "Meaning is there," Howie continues," at times literally spelled out, while simultaneously a kind of opacityof both medium and meaningdemands the viewer's attention."
Commemorating Alex Powers: Inquiries, the Art Museum has produced a 57-page catalogue. With four-color images of all 41 works in the exhibition, the catalogue is a mini-exhibit in itself that documents the breadth of the artist's work over the past 20 years. The catalogue will be on sale in the Museum Shop for $12 ($10 for Art Museum members).
Treelee MacAnn: Looking Out, Looking In, includes 44 of MacAnn's works created over the past 23 years.
A professor of art at Coastal Carolina University since 1990, MacAnn teaches what she loves to do herself -- printmaking, drawing and design. A native of Rochester, NY, MacAnn grew up exposed to art in an environment with a rich tradition in the graphic arts and photography; media she readily embraced at both State University of New York Oswego and Bowling Green State University where she received her BA and MFA respectively. While attending SUNY Oswego, MacAnn discovered printmaking was her medium of choice. The discipline offered a variety of interesting processes and combined aspects of painting, drawing and photography, all disciplines she enjoyed.
MacAnn's work can be divided into two primary
areas of interest: the human form and the landscape. Most recently
she has been working with non-toxic intaglio-type printmaking.
Using still frames of old black-and-white movies and old photographs
from past decades, MacAnn is revisiting and "rewriting"
historical narratives, oftentimes in series.
"My recent work reflects my interest in film, especially
old black-and-white movies. Movies have been 'my addiction' since
childhood and are the source of my interest in drama," says
MacAnn. She continues, "I have a strong love of the meditative
process of drawing and hands-on physical processes, which printmaking
incorporates. As a visual artist, I can still direct the elements
of art to create visual dramas that imply, but do not dictate,
a story."
An award winning artist, MacAnn's work has been featured in more than 100-juried international and national exhibitions.
The Franklin G. Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum is a wholly nonprofit institution located across from Springmaid Pier at 3100 South Ocean Boulevard in Myrtle Beach. Components of Museum programs are funded in part by support from the City of Myrtle Beach, the Horry County Council and the South Carolina Arts Commission, which receives support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
For further information check our SC Institutional Gallery listings, call 843/238-2510 or visit (www.MyrtleBeachArtMuseum.org).
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