July Issue 2000
Folk Art Center in Asheville, NC, Offers Two New Exhibits
The Folk Art Center's Focus Gallery, in Asheville, NC, presents works by Carmen Grier and Jack Rodgers through Aug. 7. The creative woodturning of Hunstville, AL, woodturner Jack Rogers and the textile creations of Asheville native and fiber artist Carmen Grier will share the Focus Gallery space designed to spotlight an innovative body of an individual members' work. Also the Folk Art Center's Interpretive Area has a new exhibition of work by Southern Highland Craft Guild members' in celebration of woodland wildlife. Entitled A Woodland Reverie: Flora and Fauna in Craft this exhibit will be on view through Sept. 10.
Although not native to the Southern Mountains, Jack Rogers has lived in Huntsville, AL since settling there after a tour of duty in the Army in 1955. His interest in wood dates back to his boyhood on a Kansas wheat farm, where he whittled small figures from the used oak slats of his father's wheat combine. Since then he has practiced a number of crafts including leather tooling, lost wax casting and lapidary. It was at a woodturning workshop in 1980, with instruction from the inspired master turner Bob Stocksdale, that Rogers declared turning as his chosen method of expression in wood. By lathe-turning wood into bowls and other sculptural forms, Rogers finds he's able to best expose the various elements of the wood, creating contrasts in color, texture and density. Working with burl wood, a hard, knotty outgrowth on a tree's surface, is his favorite material because of the range of patterns and textures found in the burl.
Rogers has been a consistent award winner at juried exhibitions throughout the country. He's also a founding member of the American Association of Wood Turners and the Alabama Wood Turner's Association. He has been a member of the Southern Highland Craft Guild since 1988. In this exhibition, Rogers shows his latest work with Norfolk Island pine from South Florida. The wood is treated different ways after turning. Some are bleached, some have a lacquer finish and others have been soaked in Danish Oil until the wood is saturated. This oil finish causes the wood to become translucent and glow when held over a light.
Carmen Grier is a resident of Penland, NC, near the Penland School of Crafts where she often instructs fiber art classes. Her formal education in the fiber arts includes a Masters' Degree in Textile Design from the University of Iowa and a Masters' in Fine Art from Cranbrook Academy of Arts. Her focus is surface design on cloth, using dyeing, printing, stitching and other techniques. While much of her professional life has been spent in academia, Grier's influences come from the natural spaces that have surrounded her, from her youth in Iowa to the Appalachian mountains. "Sprouting green rows of corn, meadows of chartreuse grass alongside fields of golden oats, and meandering lines of farm fencing-these references are counterbalanced now by the ancient forest contours and colors of the verdant Blue Ridge Mountains..." writes Grier of her influences.
In this exhibition, Grier shows some of her latest explorations with machine embroidery. She begins with white cloth, carefully dyed and printed with a variety of techniques, and then she embellishes the surface with richly textured embroidery. Machine embroidery offers an immediate result, making it possible to make design choices as the composition flows out stitch by stitch, much like a painting. She changes color and stitch type as a painter switches paints and brush strokes. From this immediacy Grier is able to express her memory of landscapes and natural scenes that have impressed her. In the textures and colors of machine embroidery, compositions grow intuitively from her mind's eye. Some work shown will be fabric which is pieced together, rather than embroidered.
The Folk Art Center's Interpretive Area has a new exhibition of work by Southern Highland Craft Guild members' in celebration of woodland wildlife. Entitled A Woodland Reverie: Flora and Fauna in Craft, this charming exhibition coincided with the World Botanic Gardens Congress, held in Asheville June 25 - 30, and will continue until Sept. 10. From ceramic images of birds to hand-carved wildflowers, this invitational exhibition features new pieces by select artists whose work reflects, either concretely or in the abstract, the activities of nature.
Visitors to the Center may be first aware of the many representations of forest flowers, such as David Voorhees' (Flat Rock, NC) slab-built porcelain vase entitled Summer Meadow. It stands two-feet high and captures with impressionistic brushstrokes an overflow of mid-summer wildflowers. Michael Crocker (Lula, GA) offers a stoneware pitcher using historic southern Appalachian techniques and style. The wild roses in relief that bedeck the surface were made by Crocker's grandmother. Giant orchids fill the surface of Tommye Scanlin's (Dahlonega, GA) hand-woven wool tapestry with soft pinks and purples.
Phillip Brown (Swanannoa, NC) contributes one of his life-like bird carvings; Feeding Time in the Forest. It depicts a mother woodpecker and a pair of wide-mouthed chicks in the hollow of an old tree. Iris Aycock (Woodville, AL) offers two of her highly collectable quilted pieces that begin as imprints from living leaves gathered in the forest. Aycock pounds each leaf's image into cloth to make a stain, and then outlines the image with fine ink lines. The impressions are then quilted to make a truly natural looking quilt pattern of actual leaves.
Some pieces offer whimsical images of our forest friends; Lucius DuBose (Nashville, TN) presents two of his hand-colored etchings. One has as its subject two very realistic toads beginning an embrace. Its title reveals its whimsy: Warts and All. Doll artist Akira Blount (Bybee, TN) whose dolls have received national recognition, is a master on the subject of woodland whimsy. Her contribution, Doll with a Fox Mask on a Twig Chair, follows a reoccurring theme in her work related to animal masks, and sports a masked doll in a pine cone vest with miniature acorns as shoe buttons. Mary Dashiell (Meadows of Dan, VA) portrays animals in many of her sculpted clay pieces. In this show, visitors can see a penguin in what appears to be a Mardi Gras mask, entitled Steppin' Out, and a near-life-sized clay chicken decorated in tiny, stylized polka-dots.
For further information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings or call the center at 828/298-4625.
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