ArtFields 2016

ArtFields 2016

Lake City, SC

The 4th annual ArtFields took place April 22-30 in downtown Lake City, South Carolina.  400 works of art, from artists in 12 Southeastern states – Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia were exhibited in venues across the downtown business district. The  artists competed for their chance at a share of $110,000 in cash prizes, awarded based on visitor input and a panel of acclaimed judges and educators. Yes- this is the SE version of Grand Rapid's international "Art Prize". More intimate, and actually having a much higher level of work, in that the work is pre-juried by museum and art professionals before it can find a venue. 

My piece this year:

The Cult of Spring   oil on canvas   4' x 8'

The Cult of Spring was in Jones-Carter Gallery

View out the front windows of the gallery to the food truck venders. Jocelyn Chateauvert's invasive Species is suspended from the ceiling

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Random work I saw and liked:

work at the ROB

Mother Nature’s Last In-house Domestic Servant by Tyrone Geter

Validation by Mark Kovaks

This is the Big Whammy winner above: Charles Clary's Be Kind Rewind

Each VHS tape box in this faux video store installation has embedded cut paper carvings in multiple layers. The layers are divided with tiny blocks of foam core. Both the meditation of the process and the finished results are equally important. I was excited. Clary comes from a town just east of Knoxville, and I had exhibited with him in a group exhibit a couple years ago and loved his work. He is now a professor at Coastal Carolina University, and I had just gone to Myrtle Beach to see his solo exhibit just a month before while I had been having a solo exhibit at the aforementioned University. The artist community in the SE is pretty intimate. Oh- at the Myrtle Beach Art Museum they had a video showing Clary's working process, which is all hand cutting. No lasers.

Yes, Godzilla is helping to take down that offensive flag that had been hanging over the SC Capitol building since the Civil Rights movement.  Seriously, SC? by Sean McGuinness.

The Mill Struggle, Unraveling the Southern Strategy by Amanda Ladymond was at The Livery Stables, among other installation and large-scale work.

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Crossroads Gallery

Brittle Tenacity by Robmat Butler

Wall Line by Alan Jackson and Hirona Matsuda

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Art in Mosaics clothing store. They always have large sculpture outside the dressing rooms.

NINE by Richard Hagerty

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Large sculpture outside all over town

Sculpture Cakes by Mark Grote

Hanging by Mark Finley

Art in Joe's Barber Shop

Americana by Amiri Farris

 Walking around Lake City during ArtFields, I ran into the mayor, who explained that these postings below were a kind of hide and go seek to find the large bronze sculpture of Huey Cooper. (The mayor was wearing a shirt with Public Works Dept. or something embroidered on it. No shirt and tie. He gets points from me on that!)

Huey Cooper sculpture

What does it say about a town whose two main commemorated characters are an astronaut and a cool guy that was everyone's friend? (Cooper carried around a rabbit's foot, and for a nickle, would let you rub it for luck. Everybody loved this guy.There is a donation coin slot in the sculpture) I think it says they have great priorities.

 They have pianos all over town just sitting there for people to play, and I swear everyone living here knows how. This kid is belting out Beethovan's Für Elise while his mom gets her portrait done by a sidewalk artist.

 We spent a lot of time at Baker’s Sweets Bistro & Bakery. Great menu and coffee.

 They had a shuttle bus to take you out to the ROB, a renovated totobacco warehouse, the furthest venue. Yes, that woman has a stick sculpture on her head.

Also, every year there is a portrait competition as part of ArtFields that 24 selected artists participate in that partners one model per 2 artists, with  awards of $1,000, $500, and $250. It is done like a reality TV show, where they eliminate a group of artists after each one hour session (I've been eliminated in the 1st round for 2 years, so this year I took a breather to get my nerve up again. I always freeze and tighten up). Two friends of mine participated again and I watched the whole process, fascinated. It is usually the ones painting who walk away with the big award, but this year it was Emmanuel Ogbonna using charcoal on paper! 

 

Rebecca Randall Bryan Art Gallery /Coastal Carolina University, Conway, SC

Denise Stewart-Sanabria: Quantum Continuum, 

 February 29 and runs through Friday, April 1, 2016.

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I installed a new iteration of my quantum physics multiverse installation at Coastal Carolina University with the hanging plexiglas portal this spring. The gallery space enhanced it in some really cool ways- the green walls on one side of the gallery, which I divided by hanging sheets of 4' x 8' plexiglass, suggested one world, while the white on the other suggested another.

 

The excellent lighting did great tricks with shadows.

The wall monitor playing a slide show on a loop created an interesting recto/verso view of the installation. The black silhouette rear view is just as important as the charcoal drawn fronts of my pieces.

photo credit Daniel Cross Turner

Gallery director Jim Arendt leads a class discussion.

photo credit Daniel Cross Turner

Lecture day.

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One of my favorite side diversions when visiting a new place I'm exhibiting in is just wandering around aimlessly with my cameras and looking for interesting stuff. Conway has a small and really welcoming downtown. Arendt had encouraged me to visit the historic haunted graveyards, and what I found was rather tragic. Besides the expected civil wall casualty graves, there were an astounding number of children's graves from one family, just in one year. I discovered there was an influenza epidemic that was almost as horrific as the 1918 one that roared through here in 1858-1859. I had never seen tombs with glass-enclosed marble statuary before. 

On a lighter note, though the downtown had a diverse bunch of excellent restaurants and trendy stores(Black Thai was my favorite restaurant), a local coffee roaster (Rivertown Roasters), they also had some remnants of the previous century, desperately still clinging on. What is not to love about a department store time has past by? Though their mannequins have been through many violent battles, they persevered. Though it was April, Christmas lingered on. It made me miss Knoxville's last 20th century downtown remnant, J's MegaMart.

Kai Lin Art/ The New South

Kai Lin Art/ Atlanta GA

The New South

I've got work going to Kai Lin Art in Atlanta for the exhibit The New South, on exhibit from 

April 8, 2016 – May 14, 2016. 

It is a group show of works on paper.

Appalachian Queen of Rubber Inner Tube Couture

graphite on paper, cut paper, jewelry, pearls, hand built wooden altar frame   22” x 15” x 1.5”

Upcoming Exhibits and Publications

Quantum Continuum

 Rebecca Randal Bryan Art Gallery, Coastal Carolina University

Conway, SC

Artist Denise Stewart-Sanabria creates life-sized charcoal drawings on plywood, depicting people in various conceptual situations. They are placed within an environment in observational and interactive groupings.
Born in Massachusetts, Stewart-Sanabria received her BFA in painting from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. A resident of Knoxville, Tenn., Stewart-Sanabria produces both hyperrealist portraits of everything from produce to subversive jelly doughnuts. Learn more about the artist here.
Rebecca Randall Bryan Art Gallery presents Denise Stewart-Sanabria: Quantum Continuum, a solo exhibition, which opens Monday, February 29 and runs through Friday, April 1, 2016. The exhibit is free and open to the public. A lecture with the artist takes place at 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 3, 2016 with a reception from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Both the lecture and reception are free and open to the public.  http://grandstrandarts.com/tag/rebecca-randall-bryan-art-gallery/

Southworks 2016 

Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation, Watkinsville, GA

Opening Reception: Friday, April 1, 2016 

Exhibit: April 2 through May 6, 2016

Southeastern regional group exhibit

People # 55,56,57 charcoal and pastel pencil on plywood

People # 55,56,57 charcoal and pastel pencil on plywood/detail

People # 30,31,32 charcoal and pastel pencil on plywood

 Dogwood Regional Fine Arts Exhibit, 

Emporium Center, Knoxville TN

April 1-22

Opening reception April 1 5:30- 9 PM
Southeastern regional group exhibit

People #49,50, 51 charcoal and pastel pencil on plywood

People #49,50, 51 charcoal and pastel pencil on plywood/detail

New American Paintings

I will be having my food paintings included in the next Southeastern issue, #124 of New American Paintings. I believe they will be on the news stands June/July!

Quantum Reconstruction at William King Museum

Quantum Reconstructed/ William King Museum

Abingdon, Virginia, Jan 4- Feb 1

You never know who will show up for an exhibit reception! Photo credit Callie Hietala, Director of Exhibitions

The concept behind “Quantum Confusion” involves the many theories given to the existence of many, or parallel worlds, both in the disciplines of Quantum Physics and Metaphysics.  They range from solid research that can deliver actual theory-proving data, to the more esoteric work of Lewis and Kripke, which has a tendency to sound like the conversation of a couple of 1960’s era grad students on acid.  Popular media occasionally tries to produce their own version of these theories, from an episode of “Lost in Space” that scared the pants off me when I was a kid by showing characters on the program walking into another world through a special mirror portal, to the recent tv series “Fringe”.  Whether any parts of these theories eventually prove to be true remains to be seen, but with further developments in the world of Quantum Physics, we are constantly reminded that the more we discover, the less we know.

My installation originally played with the portal idea, using 4' x 8' sheets of hanging Plexiglas. I've recently been reconstructing the original layout, using the random architecture of gallery spaces and buildings at the portals with which my characters confront.  The Physicist, with her pencil and clipboard, is the only alert presence, as the other participants complacently participate in something they haven’t figured out yet.

All my work is direct drawing with charcoal and pastel pencil on birch or maple plywood. They are then varnished, cut out, back supported, and mounted on the floor stands I make.

Commissions for McGhee Tyson Airport Corporate Offices

McGhee Tyson Airport Commissions

My four pieces for the McGhee Tyson Airport Corporate offices have just been installed...in a location most people don't get to go to, so here they are! They are multi layer mixed-media with watercolor on paper, cut paper, wood, plexiglass, archival ink jet prints, and hand built frames with model airplane nose cones and wood propellers. They describe the four main types of travelers. I used as inspiration book and advertisement illustration with a slight suggestion of vintage 1950's/'60's.

Business Traveler

Adventure Traveler

Family Travelers

 

First Time Travelers

There will also be, at some point, T-shirts available at the airport gift shops with my graphic design versions on them. The airport's graphic designer will be adding the text and logos. T-shirt sales will help to support the superb Arts in the Airport program, run cooperatively by the Knoxville Arts and Culture Alliance with the McGhee Tyson Airport, which has been supporting two exhibits a year in the airport for years now.