May: Leilani, Sabine Schmidt, Christopher Mostyn, Ed Pennebaker

Fayetteville Underground : May 6th 5-8pm
First Thursday Opening Reception

Join us this May as the Fayetteville Underground unveils four exciting, new exhibitions. The Revolver Gallery will feature Fayetteville Underground artist Leilani's new paintings entitled "Django" in her striking, allegorical style. The Hive Gallery will feature Sabine Schmidt, also a Fayetteville Underground artist, in an exhibition of her intriguing photographs, "We've Been Holding This Moment for You." The Vault Gallery will feature the playful monster drawings of Christopher Mostyn, a visiting artist from Springfield, Missouri. The E-Street Gallery will showcase the colorful blown glass works of the nationally acclaimed artist Ed Pennebaker.

Paintings by Leilani

In the Revolver Gallery:
Django
2010 paintings by Leilani

Artist Statement: Django; Romani for “I awake” is the exhibition title which will include two series of paintings titled Dream Awake and Enthronement. Art is a means to actively dream. Visceral messages compel me to create a kind of narrative order to the series of moments that occur somewhere between total darkness and total light. Living my potential is to use and be used by art to overlap the distance between the two. The allegorical Dream Awake series of paintings are inspired by actual events as well as dreams. Painting allows me to revisit life experiences in search for their universal truth. A recalled dream can reveal a story that through the act of painting becomes an event, a place for interaction, a place to begin again to dream.The large scale figurative Enthronement series of paintings borrow the imagery of thrones as a means to express a kind of rite of passage into self-authority. As a culture we seldom celebrate individualized authority; the ability to lead oneself, to follow oneself. I address the necessity of inauguration; the celebration of ones earned authenticity and conviction as a necessary component to an awakened life.

Photography by Sabine Schmidt

In the Hive Gallery:
We’ve Been Holding This Moment for You
Photography by Sabine Schmidt

Artist Statement: Two people walk down a city street. Do they see the same street and have the same responses to what is around them? Or do each person’s senses create a different street? The street consists of moments in time, offered to the passers-by. Almost all of these moments are as mundane as the environment in which they take place, but they all have the potential to become something bigger, something symbolic or memorable. Whether in cities or out in the country, the camera eye is ready to find the formal in the mundane, give it permanence, and connect time with place.

Sabine Schmidt was born and raised in Germany and came to Fayetteville to study literary translation at the University of Arkansas. As a music journalist, college instructor, and translator, she has lived in several countries and likes to test the walkability of cities in North America and Europe. Top three so far: Hamburg, Montreal, and New York.

Works on Paper by Christopher Mostyn

In the Vault Gallery:
Christopher Mostyn

Artist Statement: I've been making monsters my whole life. I grew up in a day when Saturday mornings made kids kings for a moment. As a bored suburbanite, I needed something to keep me interested and pop culture was just the ticket. Monsters, sci-fi, comics, all fed an insatiable appetite, one fueled but the ordinariness of the neighborhood and the dysfunction of the family. The work in this show is mostly new work with a few older imaged peppered in. Sheer joy is it's one constant theme. I have recently returned to making comics and this may be the last show of strictly "art" for a while but who knows. If there is one thing I have learned it is not to underestimate the power of ennui.

Glass works by Ed Pennebaker

In the E Street Gallery:
Glass works by Ed Pennebaker

Artist Statement: Much of my work with the glass shows its fluid qualities and its interaction with light. I derive inspiration from the garden and the woods surrounding my home and studio. The many seeds, buds, blooms, pods, and growing and developing plants and organisms continually amaze and inspire me. But I see no need to replicate nature, I prefer to interpret and reimagine. My latest sculptures deal with the natural environment and our relationship to our natural resources. "Prairie Grass" is indicative of the wind and the way it moves the plants rooted in the layers of earth.

Ed Pennebaker owns and runs Red Fern Glass, a one man glass blowing studio. In 2005 one of Ed’s works was installed in the Fred W. Smith Conference center on the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences campus in Little Rock, Arkansas. Glass made by Ed has been shown at SOFA Chicago by Function Art Gallery. Chandeliers by Ed were awarded the "Excellence in LIghting" award at the Philadelphia Furniture and Furnishings Show and a Red/Amber/Smoke chandelier was chosen to exhibit in the 2001 Hsinchu International Glass Art Festival in Hsinchu, Taiwan. His work was chosen in 1993 for the White House Crafts Collection. He has sold glass in major museum shops and galleries nationwide.

Behind the Hive Gallery:
Leilani's art mentorship student exhibition

Behind the hive, features the art work of Leilani's private & individual students as a part of Art Mentorship; a program offered through The New School. Leilani sees herself as a catalyst, inspiring creative potential. She encourages trust of intuition as the informant.

As always there are open studios to tour, work in progress to see, and artists to meet. There will be new work by the talented underground studio artists in the back Vault gallery and the fine crafts you have come to expect in the E Street Gallery.

Once again this is all a part of the cultural amenity that is the visual arts on the First Thursday of every month at the Fayetteville Underground on the Fayetteville Square from 5-8p.m.

Tell your friends and see you there!
The exhibitions will remain up through May 29th.

The Fayetteville Underground
Basement of One East Square Plaza
East side of the Historic Fayetteville Square.
Fayetteville, AR
Gallery Hours W-F 12-7pm
Saturday 10-5pm
4 galleries: Open Studios
www.fayettevilleunderground.com
www.fayettevilleunderground.blogspot.com