September Issue 2001
Green Hill Center For NC Art in Greensboro, NC, Features Works by Self-Taught Artists
Through Nov. 9, Green Hill Center for NC Art in Greensboro, NC, will host three exhibitions of artists demonstrating a shared commitment, personal calling, and creativity with talent and expression extending beyond mainstream conventions.
Autonomous is an exhibition of inventions, expressions, simulations, and rendered visions by 10 self-taught artists in NC. Tom Patterson, a freelance visual-art writer and guest curator from Winston-Salem, NC, has brought together this exhibition of artists "to hopefully prompt fresh thought about marginalizing terms such as 'outsider art,' the limitations of such categories, and the shifting relationships between the academy and the street and between 'high' and 'low' culture."
Over the past last few decades of the 20th century there developed a widespread interest in the work of artists who fit the description of what most often misleadingly has been described as "outsider" artists. Other terms often used to describe works by these untrained artists are "art brut," "visionary," "intuitive," and "folk art."
This exhibition is also designed to provide broader regional exposure to these deserving artists, most of whom are not widely known beyond their communities. Despite their lack of formal art education, they have developed significant bodies of work in the form of paintings, drawings, assemblages, or other sculptural works.
The artists represented in the show are: Donald
Austin of Tarboro, NC, who uses found metal objects and other
castoff materials to create his intriguing, abstract assemblages;
Samuel Branley of Winston Salem, NC, who makes elegant sculptural
figures sculptures out of wire. Richard Brown of Littleton, NC,
creates model spacecraft and other elaborate model structures
that he fabricates from styrofoam, corsage pins, wire and other
materials that he uses on a daily basis at the florist shop that
he owns and operates. Ray Congelton of Greenville, NC, makes futuristic
model cars out of disposable picnic plates and other ordinary
materials. William Fields from Winston-Salem, makes intricate,
richly colored visionary figural drawings.
Mike Lindenthal
David Jarrell from Vail, NC, uses a combination of red clay, cement and marbles, paint, stones, and other materials to make his small, vaguely Mayan-looking figural sculptures that he encases in sparely decorated, coffin-like boxes. Mike Lindenthal of Winston Salem, uses clay, fabric, wood, and other materials to make exotic looking dolls and other figural sculptures whose physical appearance, hairstyles, and clothing are based on those of Japanese Kabuki dancers, Ninja warriors, Coptic priests, and Rastafarians. Ted Lyons of Kernersville, NC, makes cartoonish mixed media paintings and figural dried-gourd sculptures. Mark Casey Milestone of Winston Salem, is a highly imaginative painter and assemblage sculptor. Ricky Needham, also from Winston-Salem, makes paintings and drawings that typically feature groups of slender, smiling, nude figures milling about in setting that suggest elaborate amusement parks.
The guest curator, Tom Patterson, is the author of many essays and several books dealing with the work of self-taught artists, and he is also the US editor for Raw Vision, a British-based quarterly magazine specializing in that subset of the art world. He has curated a number of exhibitions devoted to the work of self-taught artists. His books include, St. EOM in the Land of Pasaquan (Jargon Society, 1987) and Howard Finster, Stranger from Another World (Abbeville Press, 1989).
Harold
Crowell
The Artists Of Signature/Studio XI features artists from Signature Studios of Morganton, NC, the country's only home for artistically gifted adults challenged by developmental disabilities. The primary goal in working with these artists is to facilitate their creative process, rather than direct it. The wide variety of artistic styles is evidence of the inner talent and style that exists within each artist. Featured artists include Brooks Yeoman, Harold Crowell, Sarah Britt and Laura Craig McNellis.
Minnie
Evans
The third exhibition is Minnie Evens Dreams in Color and features a group of 33 pieces from the permanent collection of St. John's Museum of Art in Wilmington, NC. At the time of her death in 1987, Minnie Evans was a nationally-known African-American visionary artist. The gatekeeper at Airlie Gardens in Wrightsville Beach, NC for 27 years, Evans only began making art at the age of forty. From an early age, Minnie Evans had dreams of prophets tossing her in the air. She made her first drawing in 1935 in response to a vision in which a voice said to her, "Why don't you draw or die?" In 1940, she began drawing obsessively, and completed over 500 works of art in her lifetime. This exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue and a video on the artist's life.
For more information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the center at 336/333-7460 or on the web at (http://www.greenhillcenter.org).
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