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May Issue 2007
NC Museum of Natural Science in Raleigh, NC, Features Works by Jeannine Cook, and Kurt Hupe
The next show to open at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences' Nature Art Gallery in Raleigh, NC, features silverpoint drawings and watercolors by Jeannine Cook, and wood sculpture and vessels by Kurt Hupe, both from Georgia. The exhibition, The Shimmer of Silver, the Warmth of Wood, which celebrates nature, particularly that of the coastal environment, will be on view through May 27, 2007.
Jeannine Cook uses vibrant colors to evoke the brilliant luminosity of flowers and the lushness of landscapes in her watercolors, and the medium of silverpoint to delve deeper into the complexities and intricacies of nature's many forms. "My silverpoint drawings, made with shimmering, sterling silver lines, focus on the delicate, the intricate and the enduring," she explains. Cook spent her childhood in East Africa where she developed a stewardship of the land - a sensibility that she tries to communicate through her art.
During the last 25 years that she has lived in coastal Georgia, Cook's two passions - art and the environment - have increasingly united. The award winning artist celebrates the natural beauty of the barrier islands, salt marshes and water peculiar to the coast, but also implicitly challenges viewers to be good stewards of this fragile ecosystem. Cook's work can be seen in museums in Georgia, Florida, Texas, South Carolina and Maryland, as well as Cambridge University, England and the Consell de Mallorca, Spain. She's also had numerous solo exhibitions at Emory University and the State Botanical Garden of Georgia.
Kurt Hupe is an artist, a writer and a sawyer with a lifelong commitment to the environment, forests and the individual tree. Equipped with old-growth logging tools, he salvages freshly fallen or dying trees and trees about to be felled to make way for development. He then turns these still living trees into woodturnings (two-dimensional wall hangings), organic furniture or abstract sculpture. "The fallen, still-living tree has become my medium, my creative partner, my product and my primary client," Hupe says. "Many of these pieces are still dying (that is to say, still living) long after they are signed, moving cryptically to reveal a more complex, organic and intentional form over time. Their human audience is unwittingly witnessing an imperceptibly slow, botanical performance art."
Hupe earned both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Duke University in economics and biological anthropology and Master's in environmental management. Since then he has managed forests in Oregon, written and consulted for the Harvard Institute for International Development, the World Resources Institute, the Rain forest Alliance, Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural resources Defense Council among many others.
For more information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings, call 919/733-7450, ext. 360 or on the web at
(www.naturalsciences.org/store/nature_gallery.html).
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