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July Issue 2004
Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, NC, Features Works by Bert Hawley, Karen Parker, and From the Elkland Art Center Collection
The Waterworks Visual Art Center in Salisbury, NC, is presenting several exhibitions this summer. In the Center's Woodson and Osborne Galleries will be the exhibit, Bert Hawley: A Retrospective, featuring the landscape, portrait, and abstract paintings of Salisbury, NC's Bert Hawley. In the Norvell Gallery will be the exhibit, All the Pretty..., featuring portrait and flower paintings by Statesville, NC, artist, Karen Parker. Both of these exhibitions will continue through Aug. 21, 2004. Showing in the Young People's Gallery will be the exhibition, Elkiand Art Center Collection: Parades, Puppets, and Paraphernalia, featuring mixed media works through Aug. 28, 2004.
Bert Hawley
Bert Hawley, originally from Hane, NC, received his BA in 1950 from the University of North Carolina after serving in the military during WWII and earned his Master of Public Health in 1967. A self-taught artist, he began painting in the 1950s, following his father as a "Sunday painter," but he didn't begin painting regularly until the 1970s, at which point he also discovered the joy of painting with acrylics, which has now become his favorite medium because "It's done like I want to do it... It's kind-of magical." Hawley contends, "If you have the urge to (create art), you do it. If you don't do it, you're not happy." So, he read more art books, paid more attention to other art that surrounded him, and attended a few classes at Waterworks Visual Arts Center, where he served as President of the Board of Directors when the organization was named Rowan Art Guild in the mid-1970s. The artist states that there was "no organized shift from science to art" in his life; he just had "the urge to do" it.
Over the years he has had two major influences: John Brady, a former Waterworks board member and teacher, who offered his expertise to Hawley and many others through critiques of their works; and Impressionist painters and their works, from which Hawley developed his own technique. His work has evolved over the years, especially after he began painting with acrylics. Unfortunately, the artist has recently had to put away his acrylic paints and begin painting with oil pastel due to health problems remaining from a brain aneurism he suffered in September of 2000, after which he underwent brain surgery and spent 8 months in speech therapy to learn to speak again.
Hawley has exhibited throughout North Carolina, including in Durham, Salisbury, Charlotte, Lexington, Albemarle, and Mooresville. His work can often be found in Fine Frame Gallery in downtown Salisbury and in many private collections, including his own home and the homes of his children, where his artwork covers the walls.
Karen Denise Parker
Karen Parker of Statesville, NC, developed the idea for the exhibition All the Pretty... over the course of a few years "after meeting a man covered with a variety of tattoos." As she worked in her home garden one afternoon, she "began thinking about correlations between flowers and tattoos." The artist states, "The patterns and commonalities that underlie things fascinate me... Both (flowers and tattoos) are decorative... Both can be used for healing... Both have ever-changing social and cultural ideas attached to them... Each has its own semi-formalized language." As a result of this realization of the similarities of her two subjects, the inspiration to create the works presented in this exhibition emerged.
Parker received her AFA in painting from Mitchell College, her BFA in studio arts from UNC-Greensboro, and her MFA in studio painting from Ohio University; she has also completed post-graduate work at Ohio University, Mitchell College, and the Sawtooth Center for Visual Design. Her exhibition career began in 1990, and over the past 14 years she has exhibited her work throughout the United States and internationally in England and the Czech-Republic.
Parker is both visual artist and writer, and she has contributed her writings to numerous publications, including anthologies, collections, and portfolio reviews. The artist has also instructed courses in painting at art organizations and colleges/universities in North Carolina, Kentucky, and Ohio. Her teaching capabilities extend into other areas, as well, which she proved as she taught a course on medicinal plants and alternative healing methods at Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory, NC.
Elkland Art Center Collection
Come see the Parades, Puppets, and Paraphernalia, an exhibit of a variety of works created through Elkland Art Center (EAC), a nonprofit organization whose mission "is to bring art to the rural communities as well as bigger cities and towns". The exhibit includes fantastical costumes, ostentatious hats, fish windsocks, puppets ten inches to fourteen feet, and colorful video and photographic documentation of various community events will be showcased.
From conception to implementation, community members of Todd, NC, where Elkiand Art Center is located, and neighboring areas have created parades such as the 2001 New River Parade in Todd and two Fourth of July parades in Blowing Rock in 2000 and 2001. Using simple household materials, parade paraphernalia exhibited there have been crafted by artists of all walks of life, young and old, in order to celebrate a love of community, togetherness, and reverence for the area.
Puppetry has been an Elkland fascination since 2002 when A Puppet Show for You premiered at the Todd New River Festival. Elkland has also hosted A Halloween Special Puppet Show and The Beautiful Ones, another original play. There are currently several new puppet productions in the works, which will be premiering early this fall, one of which will take place in July 2004 at the Mona Bismarck Foundation Gallery in Paris, France.
For further information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the center at 704/636-1882 or on the web
at (www.waterworks.org).
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