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July Issue 2006
Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC, Offers Several Exhibits for the Summer
The Fine Art Museum at the Fine & Performing Arts Center, at Western Carolina University will feature several new exhibitions throughout the summer. Located in Cullowhee, NC, in the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains, just 50 minutes west of Asheville, NC, and 2 plus hours from Atlanta, GA, and Knoxville, TN, the Fine Art Museum presents a full spectrum of creativity to reveal the underlying parallels and differences among wide-ranging forms of expression in the visual arts.
The inaugural year exhibit WORLDVIEWS: Selections from the Permanent Collection and New Acquisitions will continue through Sept. 2, 2006, to highlight the finest contemporary fine art and craft by emerging and noted local, regional, national, and international artists. Gallery visitors will see for the first time prize works of art from Westerns' growing permanent collection that have been in storage during the new art museums construction phase. New gifts to the collection will also be featured.
Fine Art Museum Director, Martin DeWitt, comments, "We are excited to announce a series of free Sunday Gallery Talks. Museum staff members will share the message of the makers, and a few fun anecdotes, in these very informal and brief gallery talks." Local and regional audiences will discover this gem of a fine art collection, offering exquisite and thought provoking original works of art in all media. The next Gallery Talk - New Gifts and Docent Favorites, will be on July 2, at 2pm. The final Gallery Talk, Blurred Lines Between Fine Art and Craft, will be presented by museum director, Martin DeWitt on July 30 at 2pm.
Jaune Quick-to-see Smith
Kicking off the Fine Art Museum summer exhibit season is Lasting Impressions, published by University of Arizona Foundation and School of Art, under the direction of master printer Jack Lemon, founder of renowned Landfall Press print workshop in Chicago. Lasting Impressions, continuing through Sept. 2, 2006, is a print portfolio of nine lithographs and one wood cut purchased for the new museums permanent collection made possible by a grant from the Cherokee Preservation Foundation. The exhibit features 10 distinguished Native American artists that includes: Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne/Arapaho), Joe Fedderson (Colville), G. Peter Jemison (Cattaraugus Seneca), Truman Lowe (Ho-Chunk), Duane Slick (Ho Chunk/Mesquakie), Mario Martinez (Yaqui), Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Flathead), Kay Walkingstick (Cherokee), Emmi Whitehorse (Navajo) and Melanie Yazzie (Navajo).
All artists in the exhibition are widely recognized for their innovative and challenging work, both within the Native American cultural community and in the larger art world. The University of Arizona School of Art brought these acclaimed artists together in a collaborative effort to showcases the strengths of the individual artists, and represents in some visual depth the state of vanguard Native American artistic consciousness at this period in time.
Heidi Leitzke
The Fine Art Museum will also feature thesis exhibitions of Westerns Department of Arts first graduating class of the new Master of Fine Art degree program. Culminating from a comprehensive three year course of study, MFA degree candidates will produce solo thesis exhibitions to showcase their creative research. Thesis exhibitions for MFA candidates, Heidi Leitzke (painting), Sarah Noble (painting), Tai Lipan (painting), Kristen Sullivan (painting) continue through July 8, 2006.
MFA degree candidates Bill Clements (mixed media sculpture), Jennifer Lipsey (painting), will present their thesis exhibitions from July 14 through Aug. 4, 2006.
Kelledy Francis (Integrated Media), will present her MFA thesis exhibition as part of The Opening of Sky and Sea, an integrated media performance at Asheville's LC Gallery on July 15, at 7pm and Greg McPherson (painting), will open his solo MFA exhibition at the Wedge Gallery in Asheville on July 14, continuing through July 19, 2006.
Following the MFA Thesis exhibitions, the Fine Art Museum will feature an exhibition New Perspectives: The Four Horseman, recent paintings by WCU alumni artists from the region to include: Chris Burnette, T.J. Holland, Drew Kirkpatrick, and Jeff Marley. The alumni exhibit runs Aug. 10 through Sept. 2, 2006.
Hazel Larsen Archer
Organized by and on
temporary loan from the Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center,
the exhibition, Hazel Larsen Archer: Black Mountain College
Photographer, will begin Aug. 22 and continue through Sept.
23, 2006.
Archer has been called the archetypal Black Mountain College photographer.
More than any other single photographer associated with the experimental
cross disciplinary college, Archer created a strikingly beautiful
and historically important collection of images based on the place
itself and the people who lived in the BMC community during the
late 1940s and early 1950s. This long overdue exhibition will
give an in-depth look at Archer's photographs from her nine years
at the college both as a student and a teacher. A 92 page fully
illustrated book accompanies the exhibition and will be available
for sale.
Archer died in 2001 after a productive life spent primarily as
a photographer and teacher in North Carolina and then Arizona.
She first attended Black Mountain College in 1944 after hearing
an enthusiastic report from another student at Milwaukee State
Teachers' College. She stayed at BMC for nine years, first as
a student, then as a teacher of photography. Later describing
her acceptance to the college, she said, "Unbeknownst to
me, a blessed star fell on my head."
This exhibition and book have been made possible through the generous support of the following: Asheville Savings Bank, John Cram, Joe and Cynthia Kimmel, Jocelyn W. Hill, North Carolina Arts Council, Western Carolina University Fine Art Museum, Rob Pulleyn, Mary Holden Thompson, F/32 Photo Group, and Jack and Helga Beam.
A $30 million, 122,000-square-foot showcase for the arts, the new Fine and Performing Arts Center at Western features over 10,000 square feet of gallery and atrium exhibition space to showcase a growing permanent collection and changing exhibition program of modern and contemporary art and fine art craft in all its varied forms and processes. Related educational programs, lectures, symposia, and visiting artists-in-residence series, and outdoor sculpture program will enhance the collecting focus.
The Fine Arts academic wing of the new Arts Center includes state-of-the art classroom studio spaces for undergraduate and graduate students in visual arts to include painting and drawing, ceramics, photography, sculpture, printmaking and book arts, graphic design, art history, art education, arts administration, and experimental work in new media and digital technology. A new comprehensive studio visual arts Master of Fine Arts degree program is now being offered with nationally noted visiting faculty launching the program concurrent with the opening of the new studio arts wing.
Designed by the Gund Partnership, celebrated American architects from Cambridge, MA, the new Arts Center was inspired by the architectural firms profound experience of Western North Carolinas diverse and complex regional history, culture, and vernacular architecture moved Gund firm principals to create the monumental design. Situated in Western North Carolinas lush and temperate Cullowhee Valley, the site of several principal early Cherokee settlements, the Fine & Performing Arts Center is in large part a tribute to the Eastern Band of the Cherokee and features numerous Cherokee inspired design elements such as a main atrium tile floor design of a seven pointed star representing the seven Cherokee clans. Also featured is prominent bilingual signage throughout the facility using English and the Cherokee syllabary, the unique alphabet invented in 1809 by Sequoyah, noted Cherokee historical figure.
Located in Cullowhee, in the heart of the Great Smoky Mountains, North Carolina, just 50 minutes west of Asheville and 2 plus hours from Atlanta and Knoxville, the Fine Art Museum in the new Fine & Performing Arts Center at Western Carolina University will present a full spectrum of creativity to reveal the underlying parallels and differences among wide-ranging forms of expression in the visual arts.
For more information
check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at
828/227-3591 or at (www.wcu.edu/fapac).
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