Art Exhibitions: Frozen In Time and Postcards From the Edge

LENOIR, NC (April 10, 2019) — The Caldwell Arts Council is pleased to host two exhibitions featuring work by more than 60 artists during the month of May.

Frozen In Time will feature a series of icebergs photography titled “Floating Blue” by New York City photographer Thomas Pickarski (ThomasPickarski.com) along with Lenoir clay artist Larry Moore’s organic sculptural body of work which is inspired by quiet moments spent along the seashore.

New Bern, NC colored pencil artisan Donna Slade  (donnasladeart.com) will present her “Faces of Columbia” traveling exhibition, and Winston-Salem native and current Bethesda MD resident Katie Stevens Corman (katiecorman.com) will showcase her drawings of people – sketching from photos, capturing a feeling, an emotion, or a mood in her work.

The Western Arts Agencies of North Carolina (WAANC) have coordinated a unique traveling art display “Postcards from the Edge,” featuring postcard-sized artwork created and donated by area artists to raise awareness and funds in support of the mission of the eight arts councils involved.

The traveling Postcards exhibit will feature approximately eighty postcard-sized paintings framed in elegant black frames.  The artwork is nominally priced with sales revenue being shared by the presenting arts councils and the Western Arts Agencies.

An opening reception for both of these wonderful exhibitions will be held Friday, May 3, 2019, 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., hosted by the Lenoir Service League. The exhibitions will continue through May 31 – free and open to the public – Tuesday-Friday 9am-5pm and Saturdays 10am-2pm.

More about the artists

Katie Stevens Corman was born in Winston-Salem, NC.  Since she could talk, she announced regularly that she wanted to be an artist and a ballerina when she grew up. After graduating high school from the North Carolina School of the Arts, Katie danced for one season with the Sarasota Ballet, but injuries cut her dance career short. She returned to fine art, studying Visual Arts and Art History at Fordham University in New York City, and taking figure drawing classes in Orvieto, Italy and at the Art Students League of New York. She is currently studying Graphic Design through the Parsons School of Design. She lives in Bethesda, MD with her husband and two children.  This show is dedicated to her grandmother, Allene Stevens, and in memory of Phyllis Hudgins, both of whom provided immeasurable love, support, and inspiration.

“Art is my happy place, my therapy, my calm, my creative outlet. It has always been my passion and a place of comfort, but my drawings have mostly been closed in my sketchbooks. I am excited for this opportunity to open my sketchbooks and share my work.” – Katie Corman

Donna S. Slade, signature member of the Colored Pencil Society of America, will present “The Faces of Columbia” exhibition. She and a colleague, Chelsea Dyer, visited Columbia in 2017, as part of a volunteer peace delegation and witnessed the dislocation and suffering endured by the populations under an oppressive government. The paintings and narrative are designed to raise awareness about the people of Columbia, South America and their struggles for social justice. It will underscore how the struggle for change in Columbia is similar to our struggle for change in the United States.

New York City photographer and published author Thomas Pickarski travels the world, intrigued with the happenstance of occasionally discovering abstracted forms in nature. He developed the process of seeking out unusual shapes, by traveling through the fragile settings and desolate landscapes where they tend to be located. This drew him to arctic regions where he discovered a deep love for the eternal beauty of icebergs. They possess characteristics of color, shape, line, form, and scale that exist independent from visual references we tend to be familiar with in the natural world. He finds them to appear sculpturally magnificent, as if crafted in a way that seems too perfect for this world. “The ice beckons me. Helpless to resist, I remain its obedient servant.” – Thomas Pickarski

Lenoir clay sculptor Larry Moore’s organic sculptural body of work is inspired by quiet moments spent along the seashore. “I find beauty in seashells’ worn and smoothed surfaces, pounded by the forces of waves and roughened by sand. Shells have traveled many miles before coming to rest on lonely stretches of beach. As a metaphor for a life lived, these shells find rest from the punishments they have gone through, their beauty still shining through.” – Larry Moore

The “Postcards from the Edge” exhibition is coordinated by the Western Arts Agencies of North Carolina (WAANC), whose mission is to strengthen the arts community in Western North Carolina through peer support, shared resources, and collaborative programming.  To accomplish this mission, the Western Arts Agencies works diligently to provide services to member organizations; to provide programs that nurture arts administration professionals and to provide programs which support the work of local arts organizations.  These programs and mission are accomplished through the efforts of a volunteer board consisting of Western North Carolina arts council executive directors.

The Caldwell Arts Council presents the arts in all its forms to the people of Caldwell County. Located at 601 College Avenue in Lenoir, the Caldwell Arts Council is open Tuesday-Friday 9am-5pm and Saturdays 10am-2pm, free to the public. Phone 828-754-2486; Website www.caldwellarts.com.