April 2013

621N4TH Gallery in Wilmington, NC, Offers Works by Janette K Hopper

The 621N4TH Gallery in downtown Wilmington, NC, is presenting a solo show of local artist Janette K Hopper’s works entitled, XXX, Nudes, Naked Landscapes and the Seven Deadly Sins, on view from Apr. 1 - 30, 2013. A reception will be held on Apr. 5, from 6-9pm.

The exhibit includes paintings, prints, and drawings and is the debut of her hot off the press series of Seven Deadly Sins prints.

Hopper says the following about this series, “I have just finished a series of linoleum prints depicting my interpretation of how a medieval printer would have been struck by our society in the context of understanding of the Seven Deadly Sins of Mankind. These Linocuts are a commentary on the societal ills of contemporary life and yet tie us through time to all mankind. The hand carving, rubbing and pulling of the prints harkens back to earlier days. In addition to the style I have also appropriated images from artists from the past.”

These works have already received critical acclaim. Gluttony was selected to be in the 5 year touring exhibit by Southern Graphics Council International and in their permanent collection. Greed and Lust won second prize in the Flood Gallery National Exhibition, juried and curated by Diana Stoll, arts writer and editor for Aperture Magazine. Hopper’s prints have been chosen for international juried exhibits at Bietigheim-Bissingen’s “LINOCUT TODAY” in Germany and in Bulgaria at the Museum of Humor and Satire.

Dennis Walsak owner/director of 621N4th Gallery says, “In her show XXX, Janette Hopper’s works offer viewers many layers of meaning. There is so much more than meets the eye. I am looking forward to disrobing her pieces layer-by-layer.”   

Nudes and drawings of musicians will be represented in this exhibit because drawing has been the sustenance of Hopper’s work and posits itself at the center of her lifelong artistic query. Gesture, movement, rest, representation, abstraction inform both the practice and content of her drawing. In her nude oil paintings, she worked directly from models being sensitive to color and form but showing light through color and value. Hopper moves the chosen media around and there is a fluid quality to her application on paper or canvas. The way the charcoal slides on the wet watercolor and the interaction of the forms of two figures gives new momentum to her practice of drawing.

Hopper lives in Wilmington with her husband where she maintains a studio. She is a retired Professor and Art Department Chair from University of North Carolina, Pembroke. She was raised in Idaho in an active outdoor family. After college, Hopper served two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Maria la Baja, Columbia, South America, and afterward was an artist, mother, and a partner in a beef, grain and hay operation in Idaho.

Since receiving her MFA from the University of Oregon, Hopper has taught in Denmark, Germany and in the United States at Columbia Basin College, WA, Central Michigan University and at the University of North Carolina Pembroke. Her work has been shown and collected extensively in museums, public venues, colleges and universities and in private galleries nationally and internationally in Germany, France, The Netherlands, Canada, Bulgaria, Italy and Denmark.

Hopper still enjoys time outside in the mountains, by rivers and the ocean side, camping, hiking, biking, and kayaking. She is drawn to light and the fleeting moments of beauty that catch your breath. There are those special outdoor places and times of day (or night) that have made such a lasting impression on her that she stopped, stared hard and burned them into her memory.

Hopper presents some vestige of those memories to you on canvas or paper. It is no wonder that Dr. Christel Heybrock, Art writer for the Mannheimer Morgan (Germany) said, “She sees not the same old Mannheim but a panoramic view and over the city, the sky and the clouds with the multifaceted summer light breaking through. Janette Hopper paints skies so immense, so fantastic and so full of dramatic color that the observer is stunned to realize that Mannheim has such beauty.”

Sometimes the nudes are portrayed in the landscape. Prof. Dr. Manfred Fath, the Director of the Kunsthalle (the national museum in Mannheim, Germany) said, “... she is an interesting and talented painter who deals with the theme ‘landscape and nature’ in a very independent and individual way. In her paintings she captures the peculiar character of the figured landscapes...I find her an interesting artist, worthy of being promoted and supported”.

As a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, she spent a year in Denmark, where she began to have European one-person exhibits starting in Copenhagen with a prestigious grant from Danish Fulbright. Her landscape paintings and prints were included in a Fulbright juried retrospective in Washington, DC, and also with New York artists in the Lincoln Center and in many other international juried exhibitions. Other notable solo exhibits include the Club de la Presse and the Boulevard de Potes Bordeaux, France, Bürgerhaus Neckarstadt and Mannheim Rathaus, Mannheim, Germany, the Frye Art Museum and the Nordic Heritage Museum, Seattle, WA, and the North Carolina Museum of Natural History, Raleigh, NC.

Hopper has works in many permanent collections including: The Gilkey Collection Portland Art Museum, Portland OR, the City of Mannheim Germany, the Museum of Humor and Satire in Gabrovo Bulgaria, Padagogische Hochschule Ludwigsburg, Ludwigsburg Germany, Gonzaga University Spokane WA, The National Park Service, Stehekin WA, many works purchased by the Washington State and Oregon State Arts Commission for permanent display in public venues, Center for the Study of Political Graphics, Los Angeles CA, Bald Head Limited, Bald Head Island NC, UNCP Livermore Library, Pembroke NC, Prints Arts Northwest, Portland, OR, SGC International Collection at the University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, and the Marselisborg Gymnaseum in Aarhus, Denmark.

For further information check our NC Commercial Gallery listings, call the gallery at 910/763-2012 or visit (http://621n4th.com/index.php).

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