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February Issue
2008
Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, NC, Offers New Exhibitions
Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, NC, will offer the following exhibitions including: The Faith Experience, featuring photographs by Sean Meyers, on view in the Norvell and Stanback Hall Galleries; Boundaries, an installation by Anne Kesler Shields, on view in the Woodson and Osborne Galleries; and Elysium: A Gathering of Souls, featuring photographs by Sandra Russell Clark, on view in the Young People's Gallery. All exhibits will be on view from Feb. 15 through Apr. 19, 2008.
This spring, the Waterworks Visual Arts Center features three photographic exhibitions: Sean Meyer's series of color and black-and-white photographs, The Faith Experience; Anne Kesler Shields' large-scale, photographic wall murals, Boundaries; and Sandra Russell Clark's beautiful black-and-white images of New Orleans' cemeteries, Elysium: A Gathering of Souls.
Salisbury is a community that takes pride in its religious and faith-based roots. The city is home to many religious institutions, from Christian Churches and Jewish Synagogues to private schools with an emphasis on religion. Thus, it seems as though there could be no better locale for the premiere of The Faith Experience, a brand new body of work by Salisbury photographer Sean Meyers, a project done in collaboration with the Waterworks and The Reverend Ken Clapp, Religious Studies Department Chair at Catawba College.
The Faith Experience documents traditions of faith, spirituality, and devotional expression in denominational, nondenominational, and even nonreligious settings. The artist photographed depictions and practices of religions, ranging from Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Protestant Christianity to Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Wicca. The wide variety of religions found within the Piedmont area translates into an equally wide variety of color and black-and-white photographs. One photograph shows Hindu women worshipping in brightly colored cultural dress, while another image presents the viewer with a dark and sobering Good Friday Crucifixion display. Some images show no organized church or religious center at all, such as one photograph of a local man who crafts handmade macramè crosses.
As opposed to traditional photographic prints, the images from The Faith Experience are printed directly onto canvas. Rather than the glossy, smooth surface one normally expects to see in a photograph, these works have a textured picture plane. This textured fabric adds a tangible degree of presence to the scene depicted, increasing the intimacy between image and viewer and thus heightening the effect of the image's spirituality.
In addition to the documentary aspects of the exhibit, the photographer cites other goals. Meyers hopes to create an awareness of spiritual diversity found within our region; he also wants to foster interest in and tolerance of the wide variety of different spiritual and religious practices. As always, the artist enjoys combining the editorial approach of photojournalism with artistic expression, as evidenced by both the educational and creative aspects of The Faith Experience.
No stranger to religious-themed photojournalism, Meyers previously worked on a year-long project documenting African-American worship services while living in Texas. The artist earned his photojournalism degree in 1991 from the University of Florida and has 15 years of professional newspaper and magazine experience, including publications in the Dallas Morning News, People, ESPN Magazine, and Newsweek. He currently teaches digital photography classes at Catawba College and operates his own freelance photography business. Meyers lives in Salisbury with his wife Elizabeth, their two dogs, Stanley and Stella, and their cat, Pluto. The Faith Experience is presented by Susan and Edward Norvell.
Living in a highly visual society, we are all constantly exposed to a huge variety of images through television, magazine and internet ads, billboard signs, book illustrations, newspaper photos, and so much more. Images can say much about our culture, but at times, it may seem difficult to make sense of all this visual clutter. To make a statement, images must be thoughtfully combined and intellectually juxtaposed. Anne Kesler Shields' installation accomplishes this in her large-scale photographic murals, Boundaries.
The images in Boundaries focus on the concept of both physical and psychological walls. The artist conspicuously places photographs of all sorts of walls throughout the installation: there are urban walls, rural walls, ancient walls, and even walls made of prison bars. What all these walls have in common is their purpose to serve as dividers, as boundaries, as tools to keep others out and to imprison people within. These walls allude to other kinds of boundaries, such as those of geography, language, politics, gender, and religion. These are factors that create psychological boundaries between groups of people: boundaries that can serve as dividers that are just as concrete as any physical structure.
To add another layer of meaning, the artist positions famous works of art within the visual mix. The use of beautiful art from other cultures helps the viewer's eye cross these psychological walls for a moment. In looking at the golden glitter of an Egyptian funerary mask, the disturbing grace of an Italian Renaissance image of the martyred St. Sebastian, or the jewel-like tones of a Middle Eastern manuscript, the viewer realizes that all cultures are deep and multi-faceted. Seeing the beauty and complexity of an unfamiliar culture's artistic achievements can remind us all how little we know and understand about that culture.
The dialogue of walls in Shields' Boundaries shows how viewers mentally consume pictures, categorizing them as familiar images or alien ones. Somewhere along the way, we realize that we have all engineered walls within our own minds, just as Shields has imprinted walls on the gallery surface. Viewing Shields' installation helps us to become aware of these divisions and contemplate their meanings in the world today.
Shields earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1959. Her impressive exhibition history includes solo and group shows held in New York, Virginia, and North Carolina, including recent shows at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design and the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art in Greensboro, NC, and Artworks Gallery in Winston-Salem, NC.
Elysium: A Gathering of Souls displays hauntingly beautiful black-and-white photographs of the historic cemeteries of New Orleans taken by award-winning photographer and curator Sandra Russell Clark. It is the first exhibit to document the visual, aesthetic, and atmospheric dimensions of New Orleans' unique aboveground cemeteries. These black and white images reflect over 200 years of the city's distinctive religious and cultural history.
Visiting the cemeteries is a stroll through the city's past and present. For many natives, cleaning and placing flowers on family tombs on All Saint's Day is still a hallowed tradition. A walk through Elysium: A Gathering of Souls illustrates the pain of losing children, the course of devastating epidemics, the waves of immigration, the nuances of social status, comparative degrees of wealth or poverty, and a hundred other details of life - and death - in the South.
Elysium: A Gathering of Souls is a recent addition to Southern Visions: The Folk Arts & Southern Culture Traveling Exhibits Program, a program of the Southern Arts Federation that features work that celebrates the South's rich cultural heritage and traditional arts. This program provides Southern communities with access to artistically excellent traveling exhibits.
The Southern Arts Federation (SAF), in partnership with nine state arts agencies, builds on the South's unique heritage by promoting and supporting arts in the South; enhancing the artistic excellence and professionalism of Southern arts organizations and artists; and serving the diverse population of the South. The programs and services of the Southern Arts Federation are supported through funding and programming partnerships with the National Endowment for the Arts, state arts agencies, foundations, corporations, and individuals. SAF partners include the state arts agencies of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Elysium: A Gathering of Souls is sponsored in part by Summersett Funeral Home.
The Waterworks Visual Arts Center is accredited by the American Association of Museums. Its mission is to offer an innovative program of exhibitions, education, and outreach that inspires and educates its regional audiences in the exploration of the evolution and forefront of contemporary art. The Waterworks is funded by individual memberships, corporations and businesses, foundations, the City of Salisbury, Rowan County, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, a federal grant-making agency dedicated to creating and sustaining a nation of learners by helping libraries and museums serve their communities, supports the Waterworks Visual Arts Center.
For further information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the Center at 704/636-1882 or visit (www.waterworks.org).
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