Past Events

Below are a few past events.

ART OUT FOR EK POWE FUNDRAISER EVENT
April 27, 2018

A fun fundraiser event for the elementary school around the corner in which 10% of all gallery sales were donated to EK Powe

Nancy Middleton, an assistant teacher at the school and neighbor from around the corner, played music during the event. Malcolm Goff, EK Powe’s art teacher at the time, had artworks on display and for sale, and Therese Daye, EK Powe counselor, shared hot off the press copies of her newest children’s book “Daddy’s Little Girl,”

SELECT Past exhibits

A CHANGING DURHAM
Painting and Printmaking Works by Kimberly Wheaton
June 25 – August 27, 2021

Many works depicted places and people Kim found herself missing in the year plus of living in a pandemic. . . .musings and reflections on how Durham has changed in the 25 years Kim has lived here.

Kim Wheaton works with oil paint, cold wax medium, oil sticks, graphite, photographs and paper to build texture, color and depth in her paintings. She adds and removes layers in each painting in order to develop a history, both in the work itself and as a reflection of the subject.

Kim sees the landscapes, buildings, and people of Durham as palimpsests — changes are added, removed and etched over time, and traces of former lives remain visible.

Mining the Personal : New Paintings by Annie Nashold
& New Ceramics by Mimi Logothetis
April 19 – June 19

Both artists utilize narrative and drawn imagery in their works. Annie with an exuberant color palette in paint and ink, and Mimi with achromatic imagery in both sculptural and functional porcelain.

This exhibit included a fun Solstice themed reception where works were illuminated primarily by Mimi’s candleabras and her thin walled porcelain lamps.

Two Takes: Paintings by Catherine and Clyde Edgerton
February 19 – April 10, 2021

Father and daughter duo Clyde and Catherine Edgerton began painting pictures of the same photographs as a way to stay in touch when Catherine moved to Florida to work on a boat. Depicting Southern spaces and people, the paintings transcend time and place, stretching the limits of how to stay connected beyond geographic and cell reception limits.

This exhibit featured fourteen pairings of works, as well as a handful of independent works by both artists. Additionally, Catherine shared three of her amazingly rich sketchbooks.

Get Off Of My Cloud Group Exhibit
February 19 – April 10, 2021

As covid hit, we quickly pivoted to online exhibitions for the spring and summer of 2020. These were actually physical exhibits documented online, and the first one, Get Off of My Cloud, is archived here for posterity. We sold over 100 works by 34 artists, and the gallery donated 10% of sales, over $2,400, coming entirely out of the gallery cut, to the North Carolina Restaurant Workers’ Relief Fund.

Meditative Obsessive
French Knots & More JEANA EVE KLEIN
Cross-Hatchings & Sculptural Paperworks ANNE HILL
Jan 16 – March 14, 2020

Anne Hill (1932–2008) was a free-spirited librarian, schoolteacher, storyteller, and life-long working artist who, after extensive travels including studying with Lyonel Feininger in NYC, settled in Chatham County in 1970. Specifically she bought the 13 room former railroad hotel and surrounding buildings in the hamlet of Merry Oaks (naming and decorating each room with a specific theme). From this compound, she constantly tinkered, laughed, stewarded countless animals, mended fences and repaired floors and walls in an artistic manner, and hosted friends and happenings — all while making a serious focused body of artwork for several decades.

This exhibit featured dozens of pieces, and several of her works are held in the NCMA permanent collection. Her ink on paper works often fool people into thinking they are sumptuous swaths of fabric when they are actually intricate cross-hatchings. Anne's other work shared here are tactile sculptural paperworks, pieces which began with her making handmade paper.

Across a working distance of several decades, this work shares similar qualities and underpinnings to that of Jeana Eve Klein, a 2014 NC Arts Council individual artist fellowship recipient currently based in Boone where she is a Professor of Fibers and Assistant Chair at App State. Jeana Eve Klein began working in textiles around the age of seven, when she pillaged her mother’s knitting basket and made 100 yarn pom-poms which she strung together and hauled through the house on a leash, like a long, limp pet snake. In the decades since, Jeana has continued exploring the world of textiles in all its infinite, tactile, compulsive joy. Her various French Knot series celebrates non-referential beauty while questioning how we as a society assign value to objects. Her larger fabric pieces combine both feminine and feminist aesthetics with wry wordplay.

Jeana Eve Klein statement    French knots are a meditative undertaking for me. My hands make them automatically, freeing my mind to count repeatedly to ten and wander in between. The knots I make are absolutely, completely, entirely and only themselves and only about themselves. They are freed from the weight of imagery. Their existence is self-referential. I make them as a physical embodiment of my own questions about the value of making itself: Has a painter ever counted her strokes and assigned value to a painting based solely thereon? How is the value of an idea quantified? What really is the true value of a French knot? Can I pay for a cheeseburger with French knots? Or, perhaps more appropriately, a craft beer? Does it matter whether or not my hands make the stitches? How does the value change when stitched by another? Is value contained in the product or in the process? Does the hand really matter? 

Curator's  Statement.    Every Jan/Feb I curate an exhibit that has some "history-based" underpinning. This is the first time I've showcased a deceased artist, and as I was planning the exhibit I realized Anne's approach to work was remarkably similar to that of a former studiomate, Jeana Eve Klein. A focused two woman exhibit emerged. Big thanks to my former neighbors Ron Jones and Spencer Lyerly, good friends of Anne's, and a part of a small cadre of friends who supported Anne at the end of her life.

From Here to Their
Paintings by Sean Livingstone, Cyanotypes by Erica Gimson,
and collaborative collages by this husband and wife duo.
Summer 2017

Sean  incorporates found/discarded materials into his works as part of a “problem solving” approach. Many pieces are built from his “excavations” and “scrapyards” of materials from previous unsuccessful attempts. His subject matter usually involves themes of memory, non-permanence, sentimentality, detachment, and loss.

The work I chose to represent has all been built from discarded record/LP covers among other materials. I enjoy using this material due to the fact that I can peel away layers in a reductive method, as well as, it can hold up to the layers of enamel and other mediums I tend to use.
 
As for the collaborative pieces I worked on with Erica, we glued handmade paper to board and Erica would begin drawing. We would then go into the drawing and peel/cutaway areas and start layering with the scraps and other materials.  This additive and reductive method started in college when Erica and I started creating collages together. We found that we had a very similar point of view for composition and line quality. As one can become too “close” or “precious” with the work, the other can step in and redefine its trajectory. Through this process, we have been able to form a symbiotic relationship.

Erica is an artist and textile designer who has been working professionally in New York and North Carolina for over 20 years. In New York, she built a successful career working for major brands and retailers in the industry. In 2013 she left her career to pursue her own work and design. Erica takes a multidisciplinary approach to her work in textiles and art using drawing, collage techniques, painting, and cyanotypes, she also incorporates hand-dyeing and screen-printing.

I appreciate the directness of making cyanotypes using the photogram process that is created by placing objects directly on the coated paper or fabric to create an image. I also utilize the shibori techniques of Itajimi, Kumo, and Arashi shibori. These techniques use shape-resist, pleating, and pole wrapping to create a variety of design and pattern. Similar to the cyanotype process, the shibori process also creates subtle variations in line quality and is serendipitous often creating unplanned effects. 

I love drawing as a starting point for my designing and as means to an end. It communicates the hand of the artist and their signature of expression. There is something about drawing that is beautiful in it’s honesty, interpreting a thought process and emotion.