Featured Exhibit

The theme for HGA’s Jan­u­ary group show is “Green,” and the mem­ber artists are tak­ing that in many dif­fer­ent direc­tions. Here’s a few artists’ com­ments. 

Lynn Wartski’s fig­u­ra­tive sculp­ture is con­struct­ed from local­ly sourced wool rov­ing pur­chased direct­ly from a local farmer. Addi­tion­al parts of the fig­ure were cre­at­ed from recy­cled quilt bat­ting and dry­er lint!

Susan Hope feels that going “Green” means more than just reusing, repur­pos­ing and recy­cling objects. It means devel­op­ing a lifestyle of being prac­ti­cal, mind­ful and find­ing mul­ti­ple uses for things that, in our cul­ture, are ‘sin­gle-use’ items. As a glass artist she has been find­ing ways to give dis­card­ed glass win­dows, mir­rors and bot­tles a new life. There is nev­er a short­age of this type of ‘raw’ mate­r­i­al. By care­ful­ly clean­ing and kiln work­ing the crumbs of tem­pered glass I have cre­at­ed use­able, food safe, bowls and plat­ters as well as unique works of art.  Glass on glass mosaics incor­po­rate old win­dow sash­es and glass, mir­rors add a bit of glitz and bot­tles are made into dish­es and planters. Says Hope, “Mat­ter can­not be cre­at­ed or destroyed…it just changes form. That’s my def­i­n­i­tion of ‘green.’”

Jude Lobe’s art­works have grown out of her awe and respect for the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment, so it was nat­ur­al for her to choose some­thing from nature for her art­work. “When con­sid­er­ing what to cre­ate for this exhib­it, I con­tem­plat­ed what the col­or green sym­bol­ized. It’s a col­or of renew­al, nature and the envi­ron­ment. The con­ser­va­tion green move­ment speaks to con­cerns about glob­al degra­da­tion of the envi­ron­ment, refer­ring to green as a col­or of bal­ance and growth. Look­ing at the col­or relax­es you and pro­motes feel­ings of cre­ativ­i­ty.  It’s a sym­bol of spring and res­ur­rec­tion. In col­lege I had an inspi­ra­tional Eng­lish teacher who wrote a haiku and read it to us. I nev­er for­got it, so for this exhib­it, I chose to cre­ate a sculp­ture of the imagery. Here is Tom Grady’s haiku:

   But­ter­fly paus­es,
 as it sees its reflec­tion
on the frog’s wet tongue.

Lin­da Carmel’s paint­ing for the show Green explores the effect of trash on the envi­ron­ment. Carmel paints a heav­i­ly tex­tured sur­face that she encour­ages view­ers to touch. In her paint­ing the nat­ur­al land­scape is com­posed of dis­card­ed items. The “peb­bles” in the riv­er bed are actu­al­ly bot­tle tops and the riv­er banks are made of dis­card­ed met­al. Carmel is very con­cerned about the dam­age that we are doing to our plan­et. “I am hop­ing that we can stop chok­ing our air and water with pol­lu­tants and make our plan­et green again.”