Fine Art

SO YOU WANT TO HAVE A STUDIO TOUR">SO YOU WANT TO HAVE A STUDIO TOUR

Published on: by judelobe

SO YOU WANT TO HAVE A STUDIO TOUR

Here’s the great news. Every­one who comes to your stu­dio are com­ing BECAUSE THEY WANT TO SEE YOUR WORK. Keep that in mind. ALL are poten­tial buyers. So make it a great expe­ri­ence for them.

Pho­tog­ra­phy by  © Iakov Fil­imonov | Dreamstime.com

MAKE IT AN EXPERIENCE

• Greet them at the door and make them feel wel­comed.

• Make it an expe­ri­ence — have some wine or hot cider, grapes, cheese or anoth­er snack.

• Have nice music playing in the background.

DISPLAYING YOUR WORK

• Here’s where Less is More. I know it is a big temp­ta­tion to put out ALL your work, think­ing if they don’t see it, they won’t buy it. However, if there is too much to see, it could work negatively. It will be visu­al overload and per­sons won’t be able to focus on that one object that will speak to their hearts. Have faith. Though there will be less work, you will end up sell­ing more. You can con­tin­ue to fill those emp­ty sold spots with anoth­er piece. Don’t hang from ceil­ing to floor. Negative space is gold­en. It draws atten­tion to the piece that is sur­round­ed by space.

• Price every­thing so if you are busy talk­ing with some­one else, anoth­er per­son will know the price and not get frustrated and walk out. Give price, medi­um, and if pos­si­ble, a short descrip­tion of your inspiration for the piece.

KEEPING IN CONTACT

• To follow up, you MUST get their email and address. Thank them for com­ing to your stu­dio. If they agreed to be on your email list, add them to your month­ly newsletter. You want to keep your name and what you do in their minds. I’ve had several peo­ple call me up when they were look­ing for a gift. Follow‑up, follow‑up, follow‑up. This is your busi­ness. You want to sell year ’round. Not just at shows.

ADVERTISE

• If you are doing your stu­dio tour through an Arts orga­ni­za­tion, to get the biggest bang for your buck, don’t just rely on the Stu­dio Tour’s advertise­ments. Send out newslet­ters, tell your friends, pass out your brochures everywhere you go. Write up your own press release on prlog.org, send out post­cards, and so on. And list links to the Press Release on sites for free like http://EverWondr.com. Post the Press Release link on your Face­book page, Insta­gram, Twit­ter and in your newsletter.

Excerpt from Jude Lobe’s ‘So you want to have a Stu­dio Tour’ pam­phlet

Pho­to Show­ing-Art  © Iakov Fil­imonov | Dreamstime.com

YES!">Do We Need Art? YES!

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DO WE NEED ART? Yes!

Art has been with us for over 30,000 years. Ori­gins of art are ancient and lie with­in Africa, before world­wide human dis­per­sal. The ear­li­est known evi­dence of ‘artis­tic behav­iour’ is of human body dec­o­ra­tion, includ­ing skin col­or­ing with ochre and the use of beads, although both may have had func­tion­al ori­gins. 

Mod­ern cos­met­ics and tat­toos have a his­to­ry, orig­i­nat­ing with the use of ochre for col­or­ing the skin hun­dreds of mil­len­nia ago. The human love of body dec­o­ra­tion involves the appli­ca­tion of col­or. The old­est known use of ochre is ∼ 164,000 BC from a South African cul­ture.

So art has been all around us for mil­len­ni­al bring­ing us joy by mak­ing us pret­ty; col­or­ing and design­ing our cloth­ing; and adding visu­al art like paint­ings and sculp­tures to record ani­mals, his­to­ry, hon­or famous per­sons or just to make love­ly struc­tures. There are many rea­sons artists cre­ate. Michelan­ge­lo described his incen­tive as ‘I saw an angel in the mar­ble and carved until I set him free.’

There is sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence that there is a neu­ro­log­i­cal rela­tion­ship between visu­al cre­ativ­i­ty and lan­guage. For the view­er, art is healthy for our men­tal health. Think of the joy you get from going to a con­cert, vis­it­ing an art muse­um or watch­ing a dance recital. 

“With recent advances in bio­log­i­cal, cog­ni­tive and neu­ro­log­i­cal sci­ence, there are new forms of evi­dence on the arts and the brain. For exam­ple, researchers have used biofeed­back to study the effects of visu­al art on neur­al cir­cuits and neu­roen­docrine mark­ers to find bio­log­i­cal evi­dence that visu­al art pro­motes health, well­ness and fos­ters adap­tive respons­es to stress.” (Beth Daley, the Con­ver­sa­tion, a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion)

New exhibit at Hillsborough Gallery of Arts

 

Art gives mean­ing to our lives. It helps us under­stand our world. It is an essen­tial part of our cul­ture because it allows us to have a deep­er under­stand­ing of our emo­tions; increas­es our self-aware­ness, and allows us to be open to new ideas and expe­ri­ences. “Addi­tion­al­ly, sci­ence has shown that view­ing beau­ti­ful art­work can actu­al­ly cause you to expe­ri­ence the same phys­i­cal reac­tions we get when we fall in love.” (Pro­fes­sor Semir Zeki, a neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gist with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don)

So go fall in love. Vis­it the Hills­bor­ough Gallery of Arts new exhib­it, SWEET IMPOSSIBLE BLOSSOMS with Ari­an­na Bara, Chris Graeb­n­er and Ian Herdell. Now show­ing March 22nd to April 24th, 2022.

~Jude Lobe

SOUL FOOD">SOUL FOOD

Published on: by judelobe

SOUL FOOD

Art is good for the soul, and you have it all around you every day inside and out­side your home. It’s not only a paint­ing or pho­to­graph on a wall, or a sculp­ture in your gar­den. It is the gar­den, the jew­el­ry you wear, the pil­low on your sofa, the table­cloth, the design on your sil­ver­ware.  But art is not just some­thing to look at and admire, rec­og­nized it is func­tion­al, too. It gives you joy in view­ing it, every day it lifts your spir­its, it is good for your health.

ART IMPROVES HEALTH
Sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies sug­gest that art improves health and well-being among indi­vid­u­als. Ben­e­fits of art include improve­ment of mem­o­ry and low­er stress lev­els. Pop­u­la­tions stud­ied found that when per­sons viewed tra­di­tion­al and con­tem­po­rary gal­leries it pro­mot­ed well-being in them and includ­ed a pos­i­tive social impact and cog­ni­tive enhance­ment. 

Saman­tha Kaplan believes that “Art is gen­uine­ly a gift to the world. It’s what we crave in the human expe­ri­ence. Art gives mean­ing to our lives and helps us under­stand our world. It is an essen­tial part of our cul­ture because it allows us to have a deep­er under­stand­ing of our emo­tions; it increas­es our self-aware­ness, and also allows us to be open to new ideas and expe­ri­ences. Art there­fore con­tin­ues to open our minds and our hearts and shows us what could be pos­si­ble in our world.”

Eric Saun­ders, “Tree in Fog No. 4”,photograph

ART IS ALL AROUND US
In clos­ing, our phys­i­ol­o­gy is deeply effect­ed by feel­ings and emo­tion. Try to keep a bal­ance of good feel­ings in close prox­im­i­ty to your­self dur­ing the day. Per­haps a small paint­ing on your desk, or larg­er one on the wall. Maybe a piece of art sculp­ture at home in your win­dow sill to look at before you walk out the door. Or a calm­ing art­work on the wall of your bed­room to send you off to a peace­ful night’s rest. And be aware of the beau­ti­ful fab­rics you choose for a table­cloth, or your cloth­ing, the jew­el­ry you wear or the lamp by your chair. Art is all around us. 

HGA arti­cle by Jude Lobe

ANYTHING-GOES">ANYTHING-GOES

Published on: by judelobe

Here are my mus­ings about the new show. 

It’s always fun when we brain-storm to come up with an inter­est­ing title for our Member’s show exhibits in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary. This time the vote went to ANYTHING GOES for the Jan­u­ary exhib­it. There are so many deci­sions that every artist has to make in cre­at­ing just one art piece and this new title offers the artist a chal­lenge.

The pos­i­tive thing about a chal­lenge is that it stim­u­lates the artist’s cre­ativ­i­ty. They have a theme/topic to which they should adhere. Here’s how they begin. What piece of art can I cre­ate that express­es Any­thing Goes? What sub­ject, what medi­um, what size, what sur­face, and the list goes on. Some­time an artist may sit in front of a can­vas for hours or they may doo­dle on paper. In any event, we hope you will enjoy and maybe one of  these art­works speaks so loud­ly to you, you’ll just have to take it home to enjoy it every day. 

~Jude Lobe View more of Jude’s work at Web­site

 

HGA welcomes two new members">HGA welcomes two new members

Published on: by judelobe

Hills­bor­ough Gallery of Arts wel­comes two new mem­bers, Ian Herdell and Pete Rodrigues. Both are wood­work­ers that cre­ate unique fur­ni­ture and wall art. 

IAN HERDELL

 

Most of my work is made from sol­id North Amer­i­can hard­woods, although I also use shop cut veneers on some projects. I love to cre­ate fur­ni­ture and art with tan­gi­ble func­tion­al­i­ty and down to earth beau­ty. I am inspired by the beau­ty and struc­ture of forms found in nature and I try to bring some small piece of that into my designs. I find that each tree has a sto­ry to tell, a snap­shot into its unique life. My designs incor­po­rate and har­ness the knots, splits, rot, spalt­ing, spe­cial grain and sculpt­ing done by insects, wind and weath­er. At times I also high­light these “imper­fec­tions” with inlaid shells and stone to bring more atten­tion to them. This approach com­bined with excep­tion­al crafts­man­ship allows me to cre­ate time­less, beau­ti­ful work for any space.

 

Vis­it IAN’S web­site

and.…

PETE RODRIGUES

For me cre­at­ing fur­ni­ture as an art form is a process of visu­al­iz­ing what is pos­si­ble, design­ing, build­ing, and then let­ting it be used as func­tion, as much as form. Over the years, I have con­tin­ued to grow in this process. In some ways it has been more of a per­son­al growth, rather than pro­fes­sion­al. I see us all like a piece of wood with our own cracks, twist, bows and rough cut edges. How­ev­er, when put into the hands of the mas­ter crafts­man, the wood can be turned into some­thing beau­ti­ful. 

Along the way I picked up a quote from the late fur­ni­ture mak­er, Sam Mal­oof. 

“Too often we who design things take all cred­it for what we do and if we have any kind of suc­cess we become very smug and con­ceit­ed about it. I think all one has to do is look at a beau­ti­ful flower, a tree, or what­ev­er, and real­ize what we do is very insignif­i­cant. We are only the instru­ments who make these beau­ti­ful objects.”

It has tak­en me a while to real­ize, it’s a lot eas­i­er being the instru­ment, then the mas­ter crafts­men!

Vis­it PETE’S web­site

FROGS VIEWED AS GOOD LUCK">FROGS VIEWED AS GOOD LUCK

Published on: by judelobe

FROGS VIEWED AS GOOD LUCK: In many cul­tures, frogs are a sym­bol of good luck and abun­dance, part­ly due to the very large num­ber of eggs it lays at one time. In Rome, the frog was a mas­cot believed to bring good luck to the home. In Ire­land, the frog is con­sid­ered a rel­a­tive of the lep­rechaun and capa­ble of play­ing tricks on you when least expect­ed. In Aus­tralia, the Abo­rig­ines believed that frogs brought the thun­der and rain, to help the plants grow. It’s easy to under­stand that idea as in actu­al­i­ty, frogs usu­al­ly bury beneath the earth and come out in large num­bers when it rains to quick­ly lay their eggs.

In that same vein, the Celts believed the frog rep­re­sent­ed cura­tive or heal­ing pow­ers because of its con­nec­tion with water and cleans­ing rains. 
The three-legged toad from Chi­na is the tra­di­tion­al pet of the immor­tal Liu Hai, who is the Chi­nese god of wealth. In Japan, sea-far­ers wore frog amulets when trav­el­ing across the riv­er for a safe return. The word for frog in Japan­ese is ‘kaeru’ mean­ing ‘return’.
< ARTWORK BY NANCY SMITH. Is present­ly in the show INTANGIBLES. Avail­able for pur­chase here: NANCY SMITH’S frogs.

HOW TO DECORATE A ROOM">HOW TO DECORATE A ROOM

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HOW TO DECORATE A ROOM

INTRO TO DECORATING
Whether you live in a cozy apart­ment, sub­ur­ban home, cot­tage by the sea, or cab­in in the moun­tains, your liv­ing room cre­ates a last­ing impres­sion for all who enter. More impor­tant­ly, it makes you com­fort­able. It sets the mood for the home and should be a reflec­tion of the your per­son­al taste. How to begin?

STEP 1: Vis­it an art gallery and buy the work of art that speaks to you. Art is lit­er­a­cy of the heart. It is func­tion­al. You will use it every sin­gle day. Every time you look at it, it will lift your spir­its.

COLORS: From that paint­ing, pull your col­or scheme for accent cush­ions, rugs and throws.

LIGHTING: Light­ing can either make or break a room. It can either make it look too dark and dingy or too bright and ster­ile. For a liv­ing room, aim for warm and cosy light­ing and use it to high­light fea­tures. For a mod­ern liv­ing room, sites like www.neonfilter.com can pro­vide amaz­ing light­ing to real­ly set the mood.

THEME: If that paint­ing moved you, obvi­ous­ly it will make you hap­py when you live with it.
Accent pil­lows, rugs, cur­tains can all reflect col­ors tak­en from your paint­ing. Look at these three takes on the same room. See how the art changes the mood. If you’re part of a par­tic­u­lar­ly patri­ot­ic fam­i­ly, you may want var­i­ous pieces of Amer­i­cana around the room to reflect this fact. You can con­tin­ue this theme out­side and boost your curb appeal by installing a flag­pole. When select­ing one, you’ll have to think about which height of flag­pole works best for your home.

Local­ly, a won­der­ful gallery to view art (and the pieces used above) is the Hills­bor­ough Gallery of Arts, 121 N. Chur­ton St., Hills­bor­ough, NC 27278. Click on images to vis­it web­site.

RESURFACE">RESURFACE

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Resurfacing In The Aftermath Of 2020

Jew­el­er Nell Chan­dler was inspired by the title. “I thought of the dif­fer­ent sur­faces I have used in my work and the new tech­niques and sur­faces I have been inspired to try with each annu­al show.  It also rep­re­sents how we have spent more than a year in a weird and dif­fer­ent uni­verse and how we don’t even know the way our lives will be “Resur­faced” once we tru­ly head back in. I found myself revis­it­ing pre­vi­ous sur­face tech­niques on my jew­el­ry and for fun I cre­at­ed a cou­ple of paint­ings on the sub­ject of resur­fac­ing our lives that I’m call­ing Going Back In.”

For pot­ter Eve­lyn Ward this past year has been full of changes. “Last fall I under­went brain surgery to deal with a painful facial nerve con­di­tion. I am hap­py to report that the surgery was suc­cess­ful.” Work­ing with clay kept her ground­ed. “My time in the stu­dio, with its famil­iar dai­ly rit­u­als, was a refuge and helped to cen­ter and keep me focused on the work. Since return­ing to the stu­dio in Feb­ru­ary, I feel like I’m resur­fac­ing from those dark, murky waters. My head is clear­ing, the pain is gone, and I have renewed ener­gy. I am still work­ing with mono­print­ing but I have been exper­i­ment­ing with lay­er­ing under­glazes and find myself drawn to more sub­dued col­ors. I feel like the new work is qui­eter, using lay­ers to build up a more com­plex sur­face.”

For painter Michele Yellin “This past year, dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, time has stood still. And yet some­how moved on. I lost my moth­er this year for the third time. First, I lost her to her advanc­ing demen­tia, then to the lock­down, and final­ly to her death from Covid-19. I mourn. I paint. I think. I paint. I remem­ber. I paint. I dream. I mourn. I paint. I resur­face, back to the light, and I paint.”

Resur­face will run both online and in the gallery from May 28 through June 20.

ONLINE open­ing: May 28th, 12 Noon. CLICK IMAGE TO VISIT ONLINE  OPENING.

GALLERY Open­ing Recep­tion: Fri­day, May 28th, 6–9 pm.

 

SENSE OF WONDER Exhibit Came To Be">How the SENSE OF WONDER Exhibit Came To Be

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How the SENSE OF WONDER Exhibit Came To Be

Jew­el­er Ari­an­na Bara, wood sculp­tor Lar­ry Favorite and painter Eduar­do Lapeti­na have spent the pan­dem­ic think­ing about their rela­tion­ship to the world and their art. This new show is the result of all the time alone in the stu­dio.

For jew­el­er Ari­an­na Bara the events of these days, filled with both wor­ry and hope, have led to a sense of won­der. “As my world has shrunk, I spend time explor­ing the small­est worlds I have access to and find a uni­verse in the land of moss­es and lichens in the woods, to the bright greens, the tex­tures, the vari­ety of leaves and ten­drils. That  excite­ment car­ries over to the nat­ur­al beau­ty found in fos­sils and stones like Aus­tralian boul­der opals, which begin as rivers of sil­i­ca flow­ing through chan­nels in rock and become beau­ti­ful­ly unpre­dictable in the vari­ety and inten­si­ties of their col­ors. In cre­at­ing jew­el­ry with these fruits of the earth I hope to com­mu­ni­cate that same won­der to the wear­er.”

For wood sculp­tor Lar­ry Favorite this has been an extra­or­di­nary year. “Due to the pan­dem­ic, I have spent long days in my stu­dio, with only a pile of desert iron­wood, tiny bits of turquoise, sheets of ster­ling sil­ver, and my imag­i­na­tion to keep me com­pa­ny. To pro­duce a fin­ished piece of art I must slow down my breath­ing, nar­row my field of vision and steady my hands. As a result, mak­ing my art has the capac­i­ty to calm both my body and my mind. These pieces high­light the endur­ing qual­i­ty of iron­wood, enhanced by a com­bi­na­tion of flow­ing abstract designs and sim­ple images drawn from nature. They are meant to com­mu­ni­cate a sense of famil­iar­i­ty, reas­sur­ance, and heal­ing. I hope you are as calmed by look­ing at these pieces as I was by mak­ing them.”

Painter Eduar­do Lapeti­na writes: “Forced by the pan­dem­ic, I was in iso­la­tion, most­ly work­ing in my stu­dio. It was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with the out­side world through my paint­ings. I want­ed the present work to be the cat­a­lyst to rethink the sig­nif­i­cance of our future and to stim­u­late ideas and dia­logue. To have a fresh out­look with an explo­sion of vibrant col­ors, impact­ful tex­tures and mes­sages of hope. I want my jour­ney in art to be a nat­ur­al orches­tra­tion of my expe­ri­ences and emo­tions.”

EVENTS">EVENTS

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Featured Art Exhibit: 

Read about how the upcom­ing exhib­it SHARE THE LOVE came to be. 

Hind­sight is 20/20. And so we are all glad to see 2020 leave us and move on to a kinder and gen­tler 2021, hope­ful­ly. We have wit­nessed the best of peo­ple and the worst of peo­ple.

One of the best are all the health care work­ers, 1st respon­ders, work­ers and vol­un­teers that have risked their lives to save lives. With so many job loss­es, more per­sons are need­ing the basics to keep them and their fam­i­lies healthy. One place that has done a mirac­u­lous job of feed­ing peo­ple in need are the Food Pantries. They have done it with the sup­port of dona­tions.

The mem­ber­ship, vol­un­teers, and staff of OCIM are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing a help­ing hand to those in our com­mu­ni­ty in a cri­sis sit­u­a­tion. And so, as a local art gallery, we decid­ed to donate 50% of our sales in our Jan­u­ary Art exhib­it, SHARE THE LOVE, to the Food Pantry.

• TO CALENDAR

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