Featured Exhibit

Read about our Fea­tured Art Exhib­it

APRIL SHOWERS, ART FLOWERS
apr 22 — may 26, 2019
RECEPTION Friday, April 26, 6:00 — 9:00 pm

The Hills­bor­ough Gallery of Arts con­tin­ues its Fea­tured Artists series this year with new work by Lynn Wartz­ki, Susan Hope and Chris Graeb­n­er: a sculp­tor, a glass artist, and a painter.
SUSAN HOPE describes her inspi­ra­tion for this show, “Cre­ativ­i­ty is not always a giv­en for any­one, but who can resist the call to cre­ate when imag­in­ing the glo­ri­ous revival of spring? The col­or, fra­grance, and ‘feel’ of this sea­son com­plete­ly cap­ti­vates my sens­es. My pieces for this show are done in three dif­fer­ent ways.  Some are ‘applique’ or glass-on-glass mosa­ic which allows the light to shine through when hung in a win­dow. Oth­er pieces are mosa­ic on board, which reveals all the sur­face col­or and tex­ture of the opaque glass. The third type of work in this show is fused–layers of glass are fired in the kiln to cre­ate a sin­gle fin­ished piece of glass. In each of these tech­niques my goal was to cap­ture the essence of a flower or glimpse of spring. It was a joy!”

For April Show­ers, Art Flow­ers, LYNN WARTSKI writes about her shift from met­al to wool for her new art dolls,  “Over the years I have incre­men­tal­ly changed to play more and more with the doll artist’s tool box. Mov­ing away from paper­clay, papi­er-mâché, met­al, all of my new art dolls are sculpt­ed by nee­dle felt­ing.

My new pieces are the result of a trip I took to Ice­land last sum­mer. The dra­mat­ic land­scape and rich folk­lore offered me new sub­ject mat­ter and the abun­dance of sheep point­ed to new mate­r­i­al: wool. I was cre­at­ing men­tal sketch­es of pieces as we were explor­ing, and decid­ed before we took off for home that I want­ed to focus on this new medi­um. I start­ed first with a piece where I felt­ed just the cos­tum­ing. I was so hap­py with the results I achieved with wool, I sculpt­ed doll after doll entire­ly through nee­dle felt­ing.  In nee­dle felt­ing wool fibers, which have scales, are drawn past one anoth­er by repeat­ed pierc­ing with a nee­dle that has small barbs along its edge.  Lay­ers of form and col­or can be built up on one anoth­er. I was instant­ly struck by the qual­i­ty and con­trol I could achieve sculpt­ing with wool. I was hooked! Garbed in their bright and cheery col­ors my new fig­ures almost seem to be bloom­ing into exis­tence.”

Painter CHRIS GRAEBNER writes, “My work tog­gles back and forth between botan­i­cal and non-botan­i­cal sub­jects. This year, as the title sug­gests, my work for the show is botan­i­cal in sub­ject mat­ter. I’ve been paint­ing big; some of these can­vas­es are my biggest ever. I love detail — and big can­vas­es allow me to dive deeply into detail.

Geor­gia O’Keeffe once said:
‘Nobody sees a flower real­ly; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time …So I said to myself … I’ll paint it big and they will be sur­prised into tak­ing time to look at it.’
I often paint tulips. I love tulips because they are con­stant­ly mov­ing. Even when they are cut, they fol­low the light, bend­ing and sway­ing, open­ing and clos­ing. Each night they close and each day they open a lit­tle wider, spread­ing their arms to the sun. One Sat­ur­day I used sev­er­al tulips in an arrange­ment of altar flow­ers. I loved the way their stems curved upward and used that curved line as part of the arrange­ment. When I came back on Sun­day morn­ing they were stick­ing straight out side­ways! They were search­ing for sun­light.”

 

 

CLICK HERE TO SEE A FEW IMAGES OF THE SHOW

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