| For more information about this article or gallery, please call the gallery phone number listed in the last line of the article, "For more info..." |
September Issue 2006
Artspace in Raleigh, NC, Presents New Exhibitions
Artspace in Raleigh, NC, is presenting new exhibitions including: Heartbreakthrough, featuring works by Claire Marie Burdulis, the Lobby Gallery, from Sept. 1-30, 2006; Public Spaces, featuring works by Nancy Meadows Taylor, on view in the Upfront Gallery, from Sept. 1 - 30, 2006; and Gesture, featuring works by Jenna Bischel, Amy Fichter and Yvonne Petkus, on view in Gallery 1, from Sept. 16 through Nov. 4, 2006.
Claire Marie Burdulis
Artspace's Emerging Artist-in-Residence (Jan.-July 2006) Claire Marie Burdulis presents Heartbreakthrough, an exhibition of textile works. During her residency, Burdulis hand knit hand-dyed yarns and alternative materials, such as plastic and wire. Her newest works focus on approaching the challenges of heartache and heartbreak with a hearty attitude. Burdulis' exhibition attempts to convey breaking through and getting over a break down with the help of the universal human heart.
Burdulis grew up in Chicago where, at a young age, she began to pursue and develop her artistic studies. She received her BFA in Fibers from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2003. Her fiber art has been exhibited in Kansas City, MO, and Chicago, IL. Recently, Burdulis has been featured in Surface Design Journal and Metro Magazine.
Nancy Meadows Taylor
There has been much discussion about the use of public spaces as we watch Raleigh undergo its current renaissance. This has stimulated Nancy Taylor's reflections on various spaces experienced on trips both in the states as well as abroad. She has begun to question what makes some spaces work and others not. The spaces Taylor finds herself drawn to are the ones that best provide a place where life can happen - where people can go to recharge or to share a common experience.
Taylor is a Raleigh-based painter achieving national recognition
for her expressive paintings of still life, floral, and coastal
subjects. In January of 2002, she was elected to active membership
in the American Watercolor Society in New York City. She has earned
memberships in the National Watercolor Society in California and
The Rocky Mountain National Watermedia Society in Colorado. Her
work has been featured in American Artist and Artist magazines
and was included in the Best of Watercolor by Rockport Publishers.
Her paintings are included in many collections, among them the
Hickory Museum of Art, IBM, Duke University, and Duke Hospital.
Jenna Bischel
Jenna Bischel's oil paintings of life size figures focus on the physicality of human interaction, the space that is subsequently shared between people, and how these dynamics address the psychological underpinning of interpersonal and internal relationships. In this series of paintings, Bischel explores the self in conflict and the plurality of identity.
Bischel earned a BFA in Studio Art and a BS in Psychology from
Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, FL, in 2000 and an MFA
from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick,
NJ, in 2004. Her interest in psychology is explored through her
artwork, examining the internal verses external, the skin and
its in/ability to mediate between the two, and how each is physically
manifested. Bischel currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Amy Fichter
Amy Fichter began drawing seriously just after she earned her undergraduate degree. Her work has always focused on the body and its weight, expressiveness, and power. She admits to being obsessed with the body and its earthliness as well as its ability to reveal the spiritual aspects of our being. Fichter notes how little true space and time we have to slow down and experience our true selves and those around us. Her drawings attempt to record the unique gestures she has observed of loved ones – learning what is only theirs, and yet, also, common to all.
Fichter earned her BA from Northwestern University, Evanston,
IL, and her MA from the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls,
IA. She earned her MFA in Drawing at the University of South
Carolina, Columbia, SC, where she studied with Deanna Leamon.
She credits Leamon with passing on her passion for anatomy and
the academic traditions of drawing. Fichter is currently a drawing
instructor specializing in Life Drawing at the University of Wisconsin
- Stout in Menomonie. She is a single mother of a five-year-old
boy, who like drawing, fills her life with amazement.
Yvonne Petkus
Yvonne Petkus is interested in making art as a means to further understanding. She is drawn to the physicality and psychology possible in skin and through space. Her richly painted oils on canvas evolve through a visual language and through the physical pushing around and sculpting of the material in an attempt to gain hold of some fleeting truth. She views her final works as the result or residue of a mental and physical process, with the aim of presenting insight into some momentary reality of the human condition. She aims to create works that are about both one moment as well as a lifetime, and that depict strength and vulnerability and the
gradations between.
Petkus earned a BFA from Syracuse University, after studying in
London at Camberwell College of Art and Syracuse London Centre.
Her graduate experience began at Hunter College of CUNY, NY, and
led to the University of Washington, Seattle, WA, where she earned
her MFA in 1996. She is currently an Associate Professor at Western
Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY. Her work has been widely
exhibited and is currently represented by the Brad Cooper Gallery.
For further information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the center at 919/821-2787 or at (www.artspacenc.org).
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing
Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc.
Copyright© 2006 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston
Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts
from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts
Online, Copyright© 2006 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved
by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use
without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina
Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.