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Our traveling plein air painter, Meg West, will be the featured artist in June at C-ville Arts. She will be at the gallery to meet you and share her stunning collection during the First Friday event on June 2nd, from 6 to 8.

Meg West just got back from six and a half weeks of traveling around the South Island of New Zealand. Small postcard size paintings, plein air style, plus local scenes of Albemarle, Highland, and Bath Counties are the focus of her latest work. “When you drive around New Zealand,” she recalls, “every bend in the road is exciting for a visual artist and what it has to offer. I hope to paint future studio paintings from my photographs.” 

En plein air or plein air painting, is a phrase borrowed from the French equivalent meaning “open (in plain) air”. It is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors, where a painter reproduces the actual visual conditions seen at the time of the painting. This method contrasts with studio painting or academic rules; those might create a predetermined look. “The fun and challenge of painting in all conditions of weather and changing atmosphere is part of the plein air spirit that I love.” says West.

Crozet resident of over 30 years, Meg paints plein air throughout the surrounding counties and especially loves painting the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive area. She and her husband traveled all around the South Island of New Zealand, this past March and April, in a small camper van. “Everyone in New Zealand loves to camp,” Meg explained, sharing her memories, “so many of the tourists plus the locals use the well-equipped campgrounds that are abundant throughout the country. I tried to do a small painting everywhere we went, all in gouache and mixed media.” 

To learn more about Meg’s work visit our web site https://cvillearts.org/our-artists/meg-west/

Our talented and determined glass fusion artist, Mary Ellen Larkins, will be our featured artist in May at C’ville Arts. She will be at the gallery to meet you and share her stunning collection during the First Friday Event on May 5th, 2017, from 6 to 8 p.m.

It was about 20 years ago when Mary Ellen first met and fell in love with glass and fire.  Watching this dazzling, yet hard and cold material, be transformed by intense heat into a multitude of art forms fascinated her from the beginning. At first, leaned on her graphic arts training to design stunning color blocked bowls and plates that might require three or four trips into the kiln to get the exact intended effect. Sometimes pieces were assembled into arresting sculptural forms.

As time went on, she wanted to move beyond this artful geometry into more lyrical representational use of the glass to form lovely landscapes, created from memories of her favorite places.  This latest technique involves “painting” with tiny fragments of crushed glass (called frit and powder) as though it were a liquid medium.  Numerous colored and patterned layers are created on thin sheets of glass, and sequentially fired in a 1400 degree kiln to form deep images. Sometimes enamels are used to create fine details or entire vistas.  Techniques may be combined, or even pushed into entirely new processes to get desired results.

The results of a kiln firing are always surprising, and usually happily so — but glass can be a harsh mistress.  It takes a great deal of technical knowledge and strategizing to get the desired effect without causing the glass to fracture or deform in an unintended way.  Sometimes days of work can be lost in a kiln mishap.  But usually the kiln door is opened to reveal a magical surprise full of rich color and flowing forms.

It is the challenge of this medium and the lovely effects not achievable in other art form that drives Mary Ellen along on her creative journey.

To learn more about Mary Ellen’s work visit her web site Maryellenlarkins.com.  

 

The talented and nationally recognized wood turner, Mike Sorge, will be our featured artist in April at C’ville Arts. He will be at the gallery to meet you and share his collection during the First Friday Event on April 7th, 2017, from 6 to 8 p.m.

In 2009, Mike realized his passion to rescue, reveal and preserve the inherent natural beauty hidden in the life filled timber of the fallen tree through the art of woodturning to be both honorable and exhilarating.

Primarily self-taught, with a goal of sculpting uniquely original work through extensive experimentation, Mike discovered approaches in presenting the bowl gauge to non-round forms resulting in distinctive art and utilitarian items. Mike’s geometric sculpted vases, bowls, boxes and platters feature flared tips and flowing, undulating curves. Mike’s rustic, yet elegant “natural edge winged vases” feature extensive balanced high and low bark with curved upper wings, displaying the fullness of the life of the tree it came from. With the odd shaped burls, Mike envisions and sculpts timeless shapes that maximize the fullness and beauty of each burl. Mike’s efforts with the traditional round shape produce uniquely dimensional signature art and utilitarian forms in an attractive variety of sizes and design detail that both play with light and reveal the timber’s inherent natural beauty.

To learn more about Mike’s work visit his web site www.mikesorge.com

Our talented quilter, Sally Mann, will be the featured member in March at C-ville Arts. She will be at the gallery to meet you and share her collection during the First Friday Event on March 3rd, 2017, from 6 to 8 p.m.

After taking early retirement in 2014 from a career in law and government policy, Sally embarked on a completely different adventure. Her love of fabric and color, together with an innate sense of order, soon coalesced into a second “career” of modern quilting. “Career – never! Been there, done that,” she says. “For me, quilting is simply a way to express the joy in my life now. So many of life’s events call for celebration, and quilts are a perfect way to memorialize them.”

Thus far, most of Sally’s quilts have been made for family and friends – personal keepsakes for remembering important events. Whether a red, white and blue quilt to commemorate America’s history, a Charlie Brown Christmas quilt for a child’s bed, or seasonal table toppers for home décor, memories and emotions are woven into the warp and weft of quilts, or perhaps they will become part of someone’s story across the coming years. Quilts are not just for piling on a bed in winter anymore. Now, the color and texture they bring to a room are like hugs waiting to be found, for quilts warm both body and soul.

 “All of my quilts are made of 100% cotton and are fully washable. In fact, many people (me included) love the slightly rumpled and wrinkly look of a washed quilt. Nearly all of the fabrics I use are from designers’ collections, many of which surprise with color combinations or astound with the depth and intensity of color.”

Like Mom’s chicken soup, hot chocolate and buttered toast, quilts wrap their arms around us, making a warm place where troubles can be put in their places and the day’s torments into perspective.

To learn more about Sally’s work visit www.cvillearts.org

Our talented quilling artist, Deb Booth will be the featured member in February

at C-ville Arts. She will be at the gallery to meet you and share her collection during the First Friday Event on February 3rd, 2017 from 6 to 8 p.m.

“My love of photography came as a result of a solo trip to Italy, in 2002.” Deb describes how she got started, “When I came back with over 1100 images, my husband bought me a printer – which came with digital editing software.  I began experimenting with the editing program, and I was hooked. I love taking “what is” and turning it into “what it COULD be.”” 

In February of 2015, Deb learned about contemporary quilling on Pinterest. Quilling is “the art” of making decorative designs out of thin strips of rolled paper. She adores playing with all the beautiful colored quilling papers, as well as cutting her own supply of quilling strips using colored cardstock. She works with strips as thin as 1/16th of an inch up to an inch wide.

Quilling is a way for Deb to let her thoughts, cares and worries recede, and allow Spirit to speak to, and through, her. “Quilling is the only thing I can sit down to do,” explains Booth, “and not look up again for four hours, never once thinking about the passage of time. What a joy!”

To learn more about Deb Booth’s work visit her web site www.DifferentLightStudio.com

Milenko Katic will be the featured artist this December at C-ville Arts on the Historic Downtown Mall in Charlottesville, Virginia. He will be present to greet you and share his work during the First Friday Event, December 2, 2016 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Milenko Katic is an established painter, his compositions often feature family and friends of varying ages together with creatures from the natural world.  In his work he expresses how they are a very important part of the world and our lives. He depicts a dream-like place with an innocence of childhood simplicity that can make your heart sing. Milenko loves animals and it shows.

Katic has discovered an honesty, a certain freedom in the studio reminiscent of purity and incorruptibility so many of us long for in this modern day existence. The visual language he has developed to convey these virtues is as mature as it is child-like guiding his audience away from chaos and suffering into a place of uncomplicated bliss.

To learn more about the work of Milenko Katic visit his web site www.milenkokaticartstudio.com