Join us First Thursday January 6th from 5-8pm at the Fayetteville Underground as we celebrate the new year and another exciting month of all new exhibitions!
Ceramic artists, Susy Siegele and Mike Haley will be featured in the E Street Gallery. Underground studio artist Adam Campbell will be featured in the Vault. Visiting installation artist Jan Parker from Chicago will be in the Hive and the works of the late Carl Berman are being presented by his widow Blanche Berman and curated by Hank Kaminksy in the Revolver. All exhibitions will be up through January 29th. Gallery hours are W-F 12-7 and Saturday 10-5pm.
Susy Siegele and Mike HaleySusy Siegele and Mike Haley
Colored Porcelain
E Street Gallery
Ceramic artists, Susy Siegele and Mike Haley will be featured for the month of January in the E Street Gallery of the Fayetteville Underground. This husband-and-wife (or vise versa) team has been making high-fired, colored porcelain dinnerware since1976. Among other collections, their work was chosen to be included in The White House Craft Collection, which resides today at the Clinton Library in Little Rock.
“We met in a glaze chemistry class in college over a quarter of a century ago,and have been involved together in clay ever since. In the early years we made pretty traditional wheel-turned stoneware and porcelain. We never dreamed when we first experimented with coloring the clay that it would turn into our life's work. Our work is an ongoing inquiry into the very nature of our existence, using a common material in an uncommon way. We are constantly striving to create work that resonates with a connection to the natural world and to humanity's place in it.”
Adam Campbell
Vault Gallery
The End of Isolation
As an artist, my job is to see the world in a different way and to share this vision with others. For this exhibit, I am showing my portraiture. The way I see other people is determined by how I see myself. Keeping a journal and practicing meditation has enabled me to appreciate the subtle beauty of thoughts and expressions, which I convey in the portraits I paint.
Jan ParkerJan Parker
Oppression, Suppression, Detachment, Growth
Hive Gallery
I am constantly responding to my environment. Through art making, my responses become self-expression, self-examination, activism, and communication. Since 2007 I have been creating installations working with the invasive plant kudzu as the primary medium in my art. Initially my response to kudzu came from the sculptural forms it created. Later, I became intrigued by its uncontrollable and uncontainable domination over anything in its path. This focus has evolved into an installation and study that has been documented since May 2009. In this work, I use outdoor kudzu growth with personal objects related to my family. Both the kudzu and objects are saturated with meaning. Together, given time in their environment, they conveyed a metaphorical narrative of family dysfunction, abuse, and growth.With photographic documentation, and the re-installation of the objects coupled with the skeletal form kudzu takes in the winter, my exhibition illustrates and exposes what underlies family dysfunction and the dichotomy of growth.I dedicate this study to my beloved Mother.
Carl Berman: Presented by his widow Blanche Berman and curated by Hank Kaminsky
Revolver Gallery
Carl Berman spent 50 years tracking the lifeways of the “People of the High Plateau,” the ancient tribes who live along the rooftop of the world. With sketchbook and diary, canvas and paint, he created a living record of these remarkable inhabitants of the remote and desolate mountain regions of Asia and the Americas.
His son, Carl Jr. said: “What was the purpose of these journeys? Initially, I think my father’s fascination with the people of the world’s highland stemmed from his association with the design of fabrics and fibers. [However], his first visits to South America not only increased his knowledge of the local designs and artisans but also brought into sharp detail the rate at which these aboriginal cultures were being overtaken by the ‘civilized’ world. So, he began a one-man effort to immortalize, on canvas, the dress and customs of the people he encountered. I heard him say, on one occasion, that should he arrive in a village and see plastic buckets in use, he was too late.”
As you view this exhibit, keep in mind that it represents the life’s work of a man on a single-minded mission to understand and preserve traditions that were slowly fading into history.
Join us for this special event: January 15th.
Blanche Berman, widow of the painter Carl Berman will be at the Revolver Gallery at the Fayetteville Underground Saturday afternoon January 15th to talk to visitors about her husband's work. Carl Berman was a textile engineer and adventurer who made classical paintings of the people of the high plateau. His paintings look at life in the high Andes, the Himalayas and other places around the world with the kind of understanding that only comes to artists who work from drawings and life. He passed away in 1990
Mrs. Berman, 97 years of age has a great spirit and brings her husband's work to the attention of her newly adopted community.
*************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. After the reception be sure to come back and visit the galleries during our regular business hours of W-F 12-7 and Sat 10-5.
Tell your friends and see you there!
The exhibitions will remain up through January 29th.
The Fayetteville Underground
Basement of One East Square Plaza
East side of the Historic Fayetteville Square.
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Gallery Hours W-F 12-7pm
Saturday 10-5pm
4 galleries: Open Studios
www.fayettevilleunderground.
www.fayettevilleunderground.
