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September Issue 2003
Waterfront Gallery in Charleston, SC, Features New Works by Karen Weihs
Karen
Weihs' loose conceptual style of oils can be viewed the month
of Sept., 2003, at Waterfront Gallery in Charleston, SC, in the
exhibit, Low to High Country of Carolina.
Waterfront Gallery is near where she was born 52 years ago on Calhoun Street in Charleston. She has come of age in her career as an artist and is now confident of her choice of subjects in her oil paintings. Trained as a graphic designer and calligrapher, she started showing her paintings at age 40 and says her journey to this point has come full circle after moving to Skylight Farm, her new home in Cashiers, NC.
Her husband, Chris Weihs, now a retired restaurateur turned real estate entrepreneur, made the decision to relocate to the high country of western NC, and Karen reluctantly followed. She says, "I was brought out of my comfort zone on purpose. My husband was determined to change our life-style. I know now it was for the better and my work has been elevated with the move. I know now my work has the merit and solidity it needed by this change of life-style. It was my destiny."
Weihs paints her conceptual abstracted landscapes and figurative works in her large studio in the midst of acres of Christmas trees near the French style farmhouse. She teaches there and helps run the White Moon Gallery in town during the summer months. She also invites master artists to teach, hosting last month Ann Templeton from Ruidoso, NM. "Ann taught 16 students from all over," says Weihs. "Next month Andrew Peters from Cave Creek, Arizona will teach for 4 days his impressionistic plein air style and in Oct., Maggie Hoybach will teach watercolor journaling. I will host my regular August oil class and next year Ann Templeton will return along with Dee Beard Dean and Kim English. I book one year in advance to attract the master artist teachers, put them up on the farm and provide lodging and food."
Weihs' new approach to her conceptual abstracted landscapes, music and figurative work has earned her a one-woman show in Mobile, Alabama, Sedona, AZ, and Great Neck, NY. She was asked to join a Raleigh, NC, gallery and has a partnership in the White Moon Gallery with retired art dealer Catherine Woods. Along with her 9 year association with The Waterfront Gallery, which she helped form, all these experiences has pushed her to a new confidence level. Woods, former sales manager of Contemporary Southwest Gallery in Santa Fe, NM, says about her partner, "We are thinking of changing the gallery to The Weihs Woods Gallery, because Karen deserves her own name. She is hard working and her heart is as big as her talent. Working with Karen in this tiny hamlet of Cashiers has been a ball. We finish each other's sentences; we love working so much together. Our husbands do the business and we do the creative end. My decade at Contemporary Southwest Galleries was real work. This time it is really fun and I love it!"
For more info check our SC Commercial Gallery listings, call 843/722-1155 or at (www.waterfrontartgallery.com).
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing
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Copyright© 2003 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston
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