March 2011

Turchin Center for the Visual Arts in Boone, NC, Hosts Spring Exhibition Celebration on March 4, 2011

Appalachian State University’s Turchin Center for the Visual Arts is celebrating the coming of spring a little early this year with their first of two Spring Exhibition Celebrations on Friday, Mar. 4, 2011, as a part of downtown Boone, NC’s First Friday Art Crawl. From 7-9pm, the Turchin Center will be open for all visitors to come and celebrate three of the current exhibitions on display, meet some of the artists, listen to live music and enjoy a refreshing beverage from the cash bar. These celebrations held at the Turchin Center are a great way for the campus and community to participate in honoring the extraordinary art exhibits that rotate through the center throughout the year.

Exhibitions being celebrated on Mar. 4, are The Hemlocks! The Hemlocks! Grief and Celebration by Lowell Hayes, In the Void: Sculpture by David Meyer and Children’s Art of the High Country.

David Meyer is an artist whose work explores many aspects of the human condition and the physical world. His work, such as his current exhibition In the Void, ranges from installations and large-scale outdoor commissions to simple objects that compel the viewer to take a second look. Over the last decade, he has worked with a breadth of materials such as steel, glass, insects, bacteria, fabric and flowers.

Meyer has had solo exhibitions throughout the United States, and has been in numerous group exhibitions, most recently in Washington, DC, at the United States National Botanic Gardens and the Art Museum of the Americas. He is an assistant professor of art at the University of Delaware.

The Hemlocks! The Hemlocks! is on display in the center’s Gallery B & Mayer Gallery, West Wing and In the Void can be seen in Gallery A, West Wing. Both exhibitions are on display through Mar. 19, 2011. Children’s Art of the High Country is displayed in the Catwalk Community Gallery, East Wing through Mar. 26, 2011.

The Hemlocks! The Hemlocks! Grief and Celebration by Lowell Hayes celebrates the beauty and mourns the imminent loss of the vast Eastern hemlock forest, which has been fatally attacked by sap-sucking insects called hemlock woolly adelgids. This exhibition consists of mixed-media canvases and some pieces measure as large as nine feet by 19 feet.

Born near old Butler, TN, Hayes, now in his 70s, has been painting the Appalachian landscape and its people for 40 years. He has a BA from Lynchburg College and a BD from the University of Chicago. Earlier work was included in a touring exhibition by the National Museum of American Art, and more recent pieces hang in the University of North Carolina complex and at the Tennessee State Museum. He currently lives in nearby Valle Crucis, NC.

Children’s Art of the High Country is a juried exhibition that features works of art by children (infants – 8th graders) in Ashe, Avery, Watauga and Wilkes counties in NC. Juried by a small group of local artists, Christy Chenausky, Lora Davis and David Modler, this exhibition includes a variety of creations from paintings to sculptures.

The competition received nearly 100 submissions of artwork. This exhibition showcases 63 works by 40 children that the jurors felt revealed originality, authenticity, self-direction, and self-expression. They considered work in age-specific categories and looked for creative examples of the type of art that kids of that specific age group tend to make.

This exhibition is coordinated by The Children’s Playhouse, a nonprofit children’s museum in Boone whose mission is to provide children from birth to age eight with an enriching, educational play environment while offering their parents and caregivers friendly support in the important job of raising children.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Center at 828/262-3017 or visit (www.tcva.org).

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