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April Issue 2009
Lark & Key
Gallery in Charlotte, NC, Features Works by Cara Ober & Barbara
Chadwick-Bland
Lark & Key Gallery in Charlotte, NC, will present the exhibit,
Short Fictions, featuring mixed media works by Cara Ober
and pottery by Barbara Chadwick-Bland, on view from Apr. 1 - 26,
2009.
Cara Ober finds beauty in all the wrong places. She aspires to create the paradoxical, awkward, and enigmatic quality of heartfelt poetry on a graffitied bathroom wall. Her desire is to see the world as it really is: gorgeous in contradiction, funny in absurd blather, and authentic in poignant longing. Of course the world that Ober sees and presents is based on her suburban upbringing, sense of humor and her own tunnel vision rebellion.
Playfully harvesting imagery from bourgeois forms of adornment: wallpaper, textiles, tattoos, and graffiti, Ober allows narratives to organically evolve and creates provocative 'Short Fictions' that challenge conceptions of beauty, value and truth. In her paintings and mixed media drawings a bird, a dictionary definition, and a dirty stain can all function together to create a holy icon and an ironic joke. She creates layer after layer, building up a surface, erasing the past verdicts then looking back on buried decisions with nostalgia.
Ober earned an MFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a BA in Fine Arts from the American University. She teaches, writes art reviews for various publications and exhibits her work nationally.
Lark & Key's featured potter for April is Waxhaw, NC, based Barbara Chadwick-Bland. She creates one-of-a-kind porcelain vessels and architectural forms that are a representation of her interest in exploring line, color, pattern and detail. Often working on an intimate scale, she entices the observer both visually and physically.
Inspired by nature, textiles, graphic design and architecture, Chadwick-Bland incorporates highly embellished surfaces on her slab constructed work. She utilizes a variety of texture making tools to achieve marks that create a quirky playful story while also conveying a sense of sophistication.
For further information check our NC Commercial Gallery listings, call the gallery at 704/379/1826 or visit (www.larkandkey.com).
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