Nuestras Historias, Nuestras Voces/Our Stories, Our Voices
Art Exhibition with curator Victor Palomino.
Opening Reception- December 3, 2011 7-9pm
Exhibition dates- December 3-30

Click here to view the Facebook event.

Participating Artists:
Chris Corral
Sandra Garcia
Molly Must
Victor Palomino
Martha Skinner
Kenna Sommer
Adriana Vasilut

This is a collaborative community art project, involving the following community and regional groups: The Coalition of Latin American Organizations (COLA), Latino Advocacy Coalition (LAC), Center for Participatory Change (CPC), Workers Center of WNC, and Nuestro Centro. Also with support by The Center for Diversity Education, NC Arts Council, and The Asheville Area Arts Council. Special thanks to Sarah Nunez for her help coordinating the exhibit.

This effort is focusing on documenting the lives and journeys of immigrants in western North Carolina. The purpose of the project is tell the story of these “new North Carolinians” as a means of beginning to grow new understanding of the common humanity of all residents in WNC.
_____________________________________________________

Curador de la exhibición: Victor Palomino.
Recepción: Diciembre 3, 2011, 7-9pm
La exhibición estará abierta del 3 de diciembre al 30

Un proyecto diseñado para establecer lazos comunitarios que cuenta con el apoyo de los siguientes grupos comunitarios y regionales: Coalition of Latin American Organizations (COLA), Latino Advocacy Coalition (LAC), Center for Participatory Change (CPC), Workers Center of WNC, y Nuestro Centro. Además contamos con el apoyo de Center for Diversity Education, NC Arts Council, y The Asheville Area Arts Council.

Este esfuerzo está enfocado en documentar las vidas y viajes de inmigrantes en el Oeste de Carolina del Norte. El motivo del proyecto es contar la historia de los recién llegados al oeste de Carolina del Norte, como una manera de generar un nuevo entendimiento de la humanidad colectiva que vivimos en el estado

Dead Fall, Amanda C. Sweet

Amanda C. Sweet, Oil Paintings
January 6-28
Reception: Saturday, January 7, 6-9pm

Artist Statement

Lush trees, wrenched from red clay, transform as a gift and sacrifice, into a different creative capacity.

My father’s ancestral land, the bones of an old growth forest, were farmed – cleared and sold – to pay for my arts education. The body of work seen in this installation is, therefore, a reverence for what I have, and will, become, from the gifts of Nature. It nods to the debt we all owe bounty of the Earth, for our actual, factual existence. These images thank my folks, and the regenerating forest I loved so much as a child, for helping me to become whatever it is that I am, now.

In terms of process, construction of a painting, with emphasis on the individual, singular brush stroke, can be arduous. But removal of paint, in creation of subtle textures, is much faster. So it has always been: creation is hard; destruction – more simple. But both addition and degradation of surface paints, as indicative of loss and regrowth within the natural world, constitute an organic, and consistent, whole. So: procedures in paint application, and removal, source the physical acts of disruption in nature, by, or beyond, direct cause, of man.

Color, texture, and the placement of hues, in range of saturation, replicate my observations of nature’s cycles, from old to new; abrupt or gradual. Soil, sand, ash, wax and other organic resources are of use to mix into the paint, so the resulting piece might hew or integrate, as much as possible, the painting’s inspiration.

It’s as if we’re all layers of brush strokes, veils, on the face of the Earth. Somehow, we integrate that which has been lost, into our physical and emotional existence, through time. For me, I feel it in daily resistance, to natural change. But, as the Appalachians testify, not even stone is static.

This painting series, by craft, intent, or physical substance, hint at that daily disruption of life, and our losing efforts to piece back together, time-and-again, our own small space, in the world. This installation nods to my family. To our land. To the myriad cycles of Nature, that rattle delicate human sensibility. Am I alive, in the same way, since our house burned down? Are my parents?

Seems to me that some destruction can be creative, but I’m not you. Maybe, as an audience, you will sense, in the present moment, coupled to perceptions of the past, or anticipation of the future, even amid destructive elements of the world that seem wanton, an unveiling, in these landscapes.

Because the search, in my landscapes, is to find a simple heartbeat, of the natural world.

About the Artist

Raised on a small animal farm, in the South Carolina Piedmont, Ms. Amanda C. Sweet took her final two years of high school, as a boarder, at South Carolina’s Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities (SCGSAH). While there, her talents as a visual artist were fortunately recognized, and nurtured.

Following this formative professional training, Ms. Sweet continued practical art studies, at the world-renowned Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), in Providence, RI. Her time at RISD included a study abroad in France, an experience during which she created work in Paris, Aix-en-Provence, Auvers-sur-Oise, Cannes, and Nice, whilst enrolled in the Pont Aven’s School of Contemporary Art, in Bretagne (“The City of Painters”), for intensive study of French Impressionism. Principle artists examined: Vuillard; Toulouse-Lautrec; Gauguin; and van Gogh. Van Gogh’s determination to paint only natural, lush, native textures and environs greatly impacted Ms. Sweet’s art, during this time, as did the following modality work: montypes; etchings; and linocuts.

Upon return to RISD, scholastics in 2D (color theory & materials), 3D design, as well as additional drawing, portfolio, and administrative studies, cemented Ms. Sweet’s commitment to creating oil landscapes. Ms. Sweet exhibited in numerous Providence-based group art shows, including two jury selected exhibitions at Brown University. Ms. Sweet was a forerunner for utilizing the upstairs office space of Brown’s Hillel “Jewish Life” Building as an additional art space for RISD painting students to exhibit. Upon graduation from RISD, in 2007 (degreed in Painting, with concentration in English), she moved, immediately, to Brooklyn, to explore an independent painting practice.

While in NYC, Ms. Sweet flourished. An invited member of two artist collectives (Hospitium Collective and The Antagonist Art Movement), she curated, and exhibited, in large group shows throughout Williamsburg, and Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Additionally, she interned as Project Curator & Art Administrator, at the International Print Center New York, NY (I.P.C.N.Y. is the first non-profit art space devoted to printmaking, in Chelsea), and volunteered, in the Bedford Stuyvesant and Bushwick communities, for grass-roots organizations offering arts training to underprivileged, at risk, youth.

But as a landscape, materials-based artist, Ms. Sweet required more direct contact with her subject matter. For that reason, she recently returned to the Carolinas, North and South, to paint their lush, expansive upland forests, and vibrant, red, rolling hills. This love of native southeastern lands, lensed, now, through a substantial education, and experienced appreciation of regional culture, also led Ms. Sweet to settle in inimitable Asheville, NC, along with her dog, Buster Roonald Blue Rooster Cogburn.

After years far afield, it is no coincidence that Ms. Sweet also lives within driving distance of her mathematician father, psychologist mother, and classical composer brother, to whom she dedicates this show, along with her eldest brother Scott, who passed away, unexpectedly, a short while ago.

Dia de los Muertos (2011), oil on canvas, 48×67″
One piece of a four-part painting and costume construction

Reception: Friday, November 4, 6-9pm
Exhibit Dates: November 4-30

Click here to visit Virginia Derryberry’s website.

Artist Statement
In my large scale narrative figure paintings set in invented landscapes, I have sought a dynamic rather than a formulaic balance between the ideal and the real. The narratives are drawn from multiple myths, but the figures are portraits of specific individuals who are well known to me rather than idealized types. This has given the narratives an added “charge” and has served to ground the subject matter in the here and now. In exploring multiple influences, the imagery in my paintings has become complex both in composition and in narrative structure with ideas drawn from sources as diverse as Greek, Roman and Etruscan mythology, Christian iconography, Jewish mysticism and ancient alchemy. Regarding the latter, my paintings include references to the four moods or “humours” that alchemists used to determined personality types and to rebis figures, androgynous beings who symbolize the perfect union between divine polarities. Extending the idea of dual relationships are constructed costume installation pieces that comment on the disjunctive sense of space, time and surface of the painted environments. The result is a virtual, shifting world where nothing is quite what it seems.

About the Artist
Virginia Derryberry’s work is shown regularly in exhibitions throughout the United States. Her paintings have been written about in an extensive list of publications, her artist portfolio in New American Paintings, volume 82, 2009. Her awards include being chosen as a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome (2010), two Individual Artist grants from the state of Georgia, the Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award and the Feldman Professor Award for scholarship from the University of North Carolina at Asheville, a residency at Moulin a’ Nef, Auvillar, France through the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the 2005 Annual Artist Fellowship from the Southeastern College Art Association. Her drawings and paintings are in the collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Morris Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, the Bank of America Southeast Collection, the Tennessee State Museum and a site-specific installation of 16 paintings at the Hartsfield-Atlanta International Airport.