Art exhibit benefits Penland, an artists’ epicenter
In a collaboration as innovative as the Penland School of Crafts residency where they met, Columbia artist Laurie McIntosh and North Carolina sculptor Jim Adams to the Midlands have launched a mixed media exhibition at Gallery 80808.
The Penland School of Crafts is an international center for craft education located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. The school offers workshops in books and paper, clay, photography, painting and more. Penland’s mission is to support the individual and artistic growth through craft, welcoming everyone – from vocational and avocational craft practitioners to interested visitors.
A skilled metalsmith and sculptor who is well established in the Durham and Hillsborough, N.C. art communities, Jim Adams is a studio artist known for his visceral, architectural work. Jim Adams’ studio practice is based on a procedure wherein the materials he collects become collaborators in the stories he tells through drawing, painting and sculpting. Adams has taught at Penland and participated in the winter residency program.
McIntosh’s contribution to the exhibition will be a display of her new work, “Pages,” an ongoing series of large, deconstructed paintings created with multiple layers of calligraphic marks and grounds, bound together to create new visual relationships between the images.
“This work was born out of some of the images that occurred while creating ‘All the In Between, My Story of Agnes,’ 74 painted panels telling the cradle to grave story of a life well lived – the life of my mother,” explains McIntosh. “Contained in this work are several layered calligraphic panels that serve as segues between the important stages of her life.”
“Penland Connections,” will run through Tuesday. Partial proceeds of the exhibition will benefit the Penland School of Crafts’ general work-study scholarship fund. For more information, visit vistastudios80808.com
Katie McElveen, Special to The State
This story was originally published November 8, 2014 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Art exhibit benefits Penland, an artists’ epicenter."