Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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Local Galleries Celebrate Excellence by SONI MARTIN There is still time for visitors to travel to local galleries and view a group of exceptional exhibitions. The Arts Council of Fayetteville and Cumberland County and the Friends of African and African American Art are presenting three collections in an exhibit titled Inspiration. All three collections focus on works by African- American artists and artists who participated in producing art books. In the main gallery visitors will see selected works on paper from two books — Voices and Portfolio. Instrumental in creating both books is the National Conference of Artists (NCA), an organization of African-American artists, art educators, museum curators and gallery owners. Both books are a limited editions of 100 and contain the individual works of art from 42 nationally recognized artists. The original works in each book cover a wide range of visual mediums and themes. Local artist Dwight Smith is the editor for this edition of Voices. The book contains works on paper, measuring 11 inches by 14 inches, loosely bound. The artists have used Buckeye limited-edition print paper, a 100 percent cotton fi ber, neutral-ph archival paper. The artist signs each work to be included in the limited-edition books. In the West Gallery at the Arts Council, the third book, titled Our Grandmothers, is collaboration between the poet Maya Angelou and artist John Biggers. After writing the poem Our Grandmothers, Angleou wanted her favorite artist to illustrate the poem — Biggers. The collaboration resulted in fi ve original lithographs by John Biggers which are each part of the individual 400 book copies signed by Angelou and Biggers. The exhibit, Our Grandmothers, is presented similar to the layout of the book. Lithograph illustrations hang next to a section of Angelou's poem. The lithographs are printed on mould-made Arches paper which was made in Trestle Editions studio in Manhattan. The original texts in the books were hand-set at the Golgonooza Letter Foundry in Ashelot, N.H. The poem was printed at the Wild Carrot Letterpress in Hadley, Mass., on a handmade paper that owes its unusual appearance to a careful mixture of rags, cotton pulp and bits of raw cotton — a formula specially concocted for Our Grandmothers at the H.M.P. mill in Woodstock, Conn. titled The Annual North Carolina University Faculty Exhibit. Ellen Brooks, executive director of the studios, was excited to share her vision for the exhibit. Brooks stated, "The focus of Cape Fear Studios' Annual North Carolina University Faculty Exhibit is to show and share the amazing work of regional university- and college-art instructors who are, fi rst and foremost, artists. They often go unnoticed and unrecognized. Cape Fear Studios wants to offer them a venue to exhibit their work and their passion. The exhibit is open to all faculty at the following schools: East Carolina University, Fayetteville State University, Fayetteville Technical Community College, Meredith College, Methodist University and the University of North Carolina at Pembroke. January's 4th Friday saw the opening of the 2012 faculty exhibit and offered visitors to the studios a chance to meet several of the artists in person including Shane Booth, Dwight Smith and I attended from FSU, as did Silvana Foti from Methodist University. A lithograph by John Biggers. "I believe that this annual faculty exhibit is one of our more diverse and interesting shows; having been a university teacher myself, I know that we teach from the depths of what we love to do the most. In my case it was literature and writing; in the case of this exhibit, it is about all of the thoughts, feelings, skills and passions that create a piece of art. It is about individual vision and perception … and each art instructor somehow teaches all of these things about the act of artistic creation. This exhibit gives those amazing teachers a chance and space to show their work to our community," said Brooks. Both Angelou and Biggers are well-known international artists. Their exploration of the African-American identity is one of heroism, strength and courage. Both Angelou and Biggers are two legendary-African American artists whose body of works refl ect heroism and strengths within the African-American community. Visitors to the exhibit are able to read the words of Angelou and picture people and places in her descriptive poetry. Always in the setting, Angelou presents imagery to the reader through color, sounds, smell, touch and motion. Biggers has developed personal symbols as abstracted representations of ideas and objects to tell his visual story, ideas and themes. In the lithographs, as well as in all of his murals and paintings, strength and everyday survival is present as well as the survival and hope of a community. Down the street from the Arts Council, Cape Fear Studios opened an exhibit The work of Warner Hyde (Meredith College) is a great example of what makes this exhibit energetic and powerful. His two pieces are from his newest body of ceramic work called White Trash Fantasies and it is a vast departure from his previous work. Whereas his previous work mostly focused on nature and letting go of the human ego … thus heightening one's spiritual consciousness … his new work embraces the human ego and follows the tradition of the Funk movement started by Artist Robert Arneson in the '70s. His vision is to create images of people with experiences that might often cause them to be defi ned as outcasts and outlaws, but who have deep and charming personalities, and surprising allegiance and kindness. Hyde's new work tries to catch the viewers' attention with strong confrontation and unusual context — but to offer the viewer mystery, interest and thought. And all the faculty artists in this exhibit offer such exciting ideas and work! Hyde noted, "Since childhood, the excitement of the natural world and the world of fi ne art has been a driving force in my life's path. Time is spent and has always been spent in the woods as an aspiring naturalist as well as in art galleries. The connection between the two worlds has led me to try to create that idea in meaningful visual communications. That connection is always there for me." SONI MARTIN, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? Editor@ upandcomingweekly.com 484-6200 www.upandcomingweekly.com 12 UCW FEBRUARY 15-21, 2012 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM