Current Exhibitions

65 Union Street South, Concord, NC

10 am - 4 pm, weekdays and second Saturday of each month

704-920-ARTS(2787)

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Current Exhibition

ELEMENTary -- The Basics: Air, Earth, Fire, Water

The basic elements tie together this diverse exhibition. Artists are inspired by natural elements such as rain, wind, and soil to create paintings, sculpture and photographs. Included are kinetic mobiles, underwater paintings, depictions of rain as seen through the windshield, mounds of earth with plants bulging out, photographs of the atmosphere, and forged steel sculptures. Artists include Syed Ahmad, Alice Ballard, Clara Couch, Chery Cratty, Patrick Dougherty, Patrick Glover, Andrew Goliszek, Carmella Jarvi, Paul Keysar, Laird Lanier, Gretchen Lothrop, and Susannah Ravenswing and Anatoly Tsiris. Works by Jason Stein, Raw Talent III winner, also will be on display..

Syed Ahmad creates contemporary glass art wall sculptures from glass, copper, aluminum and other materials. The work is complex layers of clear, opaque and dichroic glass fired in a kiln to create abstract images that give impressions of water, plants, and reflections. Born and raised by the Kedah River in Malaysia, much of his work explores his experiences with water.

 

Alice Ballard sculpts forms, such as pods, bulbs, leaves and acorns that reflect her relationship with nature. Her earthenware sculptures are finished with “terra sigilatta,” which is made by suspending the finest clay in water and produces a slight sheen. A Greenville, SC, resident, Ballard's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is in the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington.

 

Clara Couch's journey toward becoming an artist didn't begin until she was in her 40s when she became inspired on a trip to Italy and came home and began a degree in art. She went on to get a graduate degree in ceramics and to teach at Central Piedmont Community College. A respected clay artist when she died in 2005, she called her works “symbolic containers that seek to replicate the spiral movement of the earth."

 

Chery Cratty paints with pigmented paper pulp on handmade paper, sometimes with a porcupine quill. Although her techniques are new, the art of pulp painting is ancient and creates a finished work that is sculptural in texture. This north Georgia artist's paintings may take several months as drying often is done in the sun, adding additional detail as each layer dries.

 

Patrick Dougherty combines his loves of carpentry and nature to create monumental scale sculptures with literally truckloads of tree saplings. His complex woven structures have earned him many awards including NEA fellowships in Mexico and Japan. During the past two decades, he has built over 150 works in the United States, Asia and Europe. ELEMENTary will include photographs and video of his massive artwork.

 

Patrick Glover, who recently moved his studio to Concord, is inspired by the ambiguity of perception. In his paintings, he purposely chooses impersonal imagery with which the viewer is invited to add his or her own narrative.

 

Andrew Goliszek's fine art black and white images capture the beauty of life and the things around us. A New York City native who lives in Lexington and has a doctorate in biology, he shoots in black and white because he believes it adds drama and richness and has the ability to bring out reactions and stir emotions unlike any color photograph can.

 

Carmella Jarvi is an award-winning Charlotte artist best-known for pastel and oil paintings of swimmers. Her paintings present her view of the experience with water. She has received two Regional Artist Grants for her “figures in water” series and a North Carolina Arts Council Residency Grant to attend the Vermont Studio Center. She was juried into the April 2009 issue of Studio Visit Magazine

 

Paul Keysar is known for his classic, representational oil paintings of landscapes and still lifes. The Charlotte artist has a passion for the land and is intrigued with the interaction of man and nature. His goal is to show the beauty of the land and man's dependence on it.

 

Laird Lanier is a mechanical engineer who combines the tools of the artist and the engineer to build large and small kinetic sculptures. Drawing from a broad understanding of material properties and manufacturing methods as well as computer aided modeling and analysis, he believes that, if it can be imagined, it can be built. His Damselfly and Lily is in the foyer of the Fifth Third Bank Concord headquarters on Church Street.

 

Gretchen Lothrop is a sculptor who works primarily in stainless steel. Her imagery often is based on music or its corollary, dance, and the paradox of time. The Pittsboro artist thinks of her work as a haiku, “the crystallization of an instant of insight that might otherwise be swept away.”

 

Susannah Ravenswing sees herself as a storyteller who tells stories with precious metals, rare gems, fossils and bones. With skill that comes from thirty years at her craft, this Germantown jewelry artist fabricates richly detailed and profoundly personal jewelry drawn from myth and legend and inspired by the beauty of nature.

 

Ken Thomas creates utilitarian objects, such as candlesticks and fireplace tools, in forged metal. He strives for stability between the functionality of the object created and pure sculpture form. His work has evolved from a very utilitarian style to one that exemplifies grace and movement.

 

Anatoly Tsiris is a native of Ukraine who taught school and worked as a carpenter before becoming a woodturner. He prefers to work on a large scale and uses a 2,600-pound Nichols lathe. He is attracted to unusual pieces of wood, seeing the beauty in irregularities. He uses only previously cut wood indigenous to this region for his impressive pieces.

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