Boone, North Carolina – The Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University proudly presents its annual Spring Exhibition Celebration on Friday, March 3, from 5-9pm, highlighted by the opening of three new exhibitions. The event is part of downtown Boone’s First Friday festivities, and is free and open to the public.
During the celebration, several of the featured artists will be on hand in the center’s galleries to meet and interact with visitors. Hands-on artmaking will be offered in the center’s Moskowitz Gallery, and a performance by artists de’Angelo DIA and Renee Cloud will take place throughout the evening, in connection with the Say: Word exhibition.
Exhibitions opening on March 3rd include the following:
Flux: Signe Stuart
Hodges Gallery: January 20 – June 3, 2023
Flux alludes to natural and manmade networks from rivers, neural pathways and
quantum fields to systems of transportation and communications, everything
interconnected and in flux. The artist’s visual vocabulary emphasizes line: single
lines emerging from material; low relief line patterns forming flux fields and
networks of relationships. Recent cut paper works, drawing/sculpture hybrids,
generally consist of two or more overlapping panels hung away from the wall to
create shadows. The cut paper works have evolved into achromatic works,
unintentionally referencing the unified field theory of everything. Light is an
auxiliary medium, creating subtle and changing thresholds between the visible and
invisible.
About the Artist:
Beginning in the early 1960s, Signe Stuart’s professional career has now spanned
more than sixty-five years. Her approach to art making has always relied on
experimentation and rule breaking. Using the materials and form of painting, she
breaks away from the standard rectangle and concepts of framing. For the artist,
a sheet of paper is a metaphorical slice of time and space, a context in which to
construct ideas about the connections and intersections of consciousness with
matter and energy. Stuart has received numerous awards including an NEA
Painting Fellowship, two NEA mural commissions, a South Dakota Arts Council
Artists Fellowship, and a New Mexico Experimental Glass Workshop Fellowship.
Say:Word, a site-specific installation by Renee Cloud & de’Angelo DIA
Community Gallery: January 20 – June 3, 2023
Say: Word examines misrepresentation, cultural appropriation, and the significance
of cultivating ones’ own narrative and the distribution of those narratives. The artists’
visual and poetic words reflect excavated intimate and public conversations, journal
entries, and social media debates. Say: Word represents the numerous questions
raised when presented with shocking or almost unbelievable narratives and statements.
The title serves as a rhetorical question, challenging the viewers to consider, “if we are
processing the same reality, how are we coming to a diversity of conclusions?”
About the Artists:
Renee Cloud is a Charlotte, North Carolina native. She received her BFA in Studio Art
from Appalachian State University in 2015. Using a combination of text art and mixed
media, Cloud creates work that focuses on the personal narrative, the black experience,
and the power of the written word. The text incorporated into her work provides only
a fraction of the narrative, leaving the viewer to create the rest. de’Angelo DIA
investigates public opinion and contemporary beliefs about cultural, socio-political, and theological issues through poetry, performance art, and photography. His creative work
focuses on the intersectionality of Black liberation theology and theopoetics. DIA is the
recipient of awards and fellowships from the Cave Canem, The Watering Hole, Hurston/
Wright Foundation, the McColl Center for Art + Innovation, the Virginia Center for the
Creative Arts, and the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture. He is
the Community Relations Manager of Goodyear Arts based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
20th Annual Appalachian Mountain Photography Invitational
Bickers Gallery (Mezzanine Gallery): March 3 – June 3, 2023
In honor of the Appalachian Mountain Photography Competition’s (AMPC) 20th
Anniversary, University Recreation, in partnership with the Turchin Center and Virtual
Blue Ridge, is hosting six Appalachian photographers in this year’s anniversary
invitational exhibition.
About the Artists:
Celebrating the 20-year history of the exhibition, artists Jessica Maceda, Byron
Tenesaca-Guaman, and Alicia Green have been welcomed back to the AMPC to share
their work. Jessica Maceda’s images document the landscapes of the area through the
lens of a local community member. Byron Tenesaca-Guaman’s work highlights the
“system of reciprocity that exists between humans and the mountains” in his homes
of an ancestral community in the Ecuadorian Andes and the Cherokee Mountains of
Southern Appalachia. Through candid portraits and action photography, Alicia Green’s
work uplifts the local skater scene. Representing the future possibilities of the competition
and expanding Appalachian narratives is the work of artists Raymond Thompson Jr., Ant
M. Lobo, And Wendy Ewald. In his series, Appalachian Ghosts, Raymond Thompson Jr. “recontextualizes and re-presents archival photographs” documenting the construction of
Hawks Nest Tunnel, built “to divert the New River near Fayetteville, West Virginia,” and
brings forth the importance of African American narratives. Ant M. Lobo’s work shares
intimate photographs and writings that share their experience revisiting Black Mountain College’s Lake Eden campus. Artist and educator Wendy Ewald’s images from her series, Portraits and Dreams, offer a unique methodology for empowering communities to tell
their own stories through work created by her students in Letcher County, Kentucky.
Continuing exhibitions include the following:
Altered Environments / Tidalectics, April Flanders, Guest Curator
Marilee Salvator: Site Specific Installation
Gallery B & Overflow: December 2, 2022 – May 6, 2023
Art and science both attempt to explain the world around us. This exhibition presents
two print portfolios and an installation that address the depth and breadth of the problems
facing fragile aquatic environments. Artists in the Tidalectics print portfolio, organized by
Eveline Kolijn, partnered with marine biologists to create a visual response to their research
on a wide range of topics related to marine ecosystems. The works in the Altered Environments portfolio, curated by April Flanders, address the impacts and problems arising from invasive organisms in marine environments. Artist Marilee Salvator has created a site-specific
installation responding to the invasive bryozoan Cribrilina mutabilis.
About the Guest Curator:
April Flanders is a studio artist living and making in the mountains of Western North
Carolina. A keen naturalist, her work has been featured in solo and group shows at museums
and galleries nationally and internationally, including the Katzen Museum in Washington,
D.C, the Center for the Book Arts, in New York, and the Global Print International, in Douro,
Portugal. Her work is in many public collections, including the Asheville Museum of Science,
the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Tucson Museum of Art. April holds a Master of Fine Arts from Arizona State University. She is a Professor of Studio Art at Appalachian State University.
Kiliii Yuyan: Thin Places
Gallery A: December 2, 2022 – May 6, 2023
Thin Places are waypoints in Kiliii Yuyan’s personal songline. He seeks them out
because they guide his way home and help him understand where he come from.
The artists says: “I may be separated from my ancestral communities by history and
hostile borders, but sometimes my ancestors are right there in front of me, blazing
in the night.” The photographs in the exhibit provide a glimpse for the viewer into
the Thin Places of the Artic North from a deeply personal Indigenous perspective.
About the Artist:
Kiliii Yuyan is a National Geographic Explorer (2021), one of PDN’s 30 Photographers (2019),
a Grist 50 Fixer (2022), a member of Indigenous Photograph and Diversify Photo. His work
has been exhibited worldwide; he has received some of photography’s top honors. His
public talks inspire others about photography, Indigenous perspectives, and relationship to
land. Yuyan is based out of traditional Duwamish lands (Seattle) but can be found across the circumpolar Arctic much of the year.
Transformations: App DigiFab
Mayer Gallery: November 4, 2022 – May 6, 2023
Digital design and fabrication technologies have radically transformed the way artists and designers conceive and produce work. The Transformations: AppDigiFab exhibition explores
how digital tools for design and fabrication are being utilized and taught by contemporary
artists, designers, and architects, and how those tools influence the work being produced
in various fields.
About the Artists:
There are ten artists in the Transformations exhibition, all of whom are faculty and staff at Appalachian State University. Adam Adcock, Andrew Bailey Arend, Travis Donovan, Derek Eggers, Richard Elaver, Frankie Flood, Chelsea Helms, Andres Tellez, and Nicole Villareal.
For more information about all of the featured exhibitions, visit tcva.org/art.
ARTtalks at the Turchin:
As a complement to the varied exhibitions at the Turchin Center, ARTtalks are led by exhibiting artists, scholars and practitioners. Each talk provides deeper insight into creative practice, context for current exhibitions or contemporary issues shaping the world in which art is created, experienced and interpreted. ARTtalks are free and open to the public. Visit tcva.org for more information.
Turchin Center programming is generously supported by Bickers Consulting Group, Art Cellar, Mast General Store and Chetola Resort and Spa.
About the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts:
The Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, named for university benefactors Robert and Lillian Turchin, fulfills Appalachian State University’s long-held mission of providing a home for world-class visual arts programming. The largest facility of its kind in the region, the center presents exhibition, education and collection programs that support the university’s role as a key educational, cultural and service resource. The center presents multi-dimensional exhibits and programs and is a dynamic presence in the community, creating opportunities for people of all ages and backgrounds to experience the power and excitement of the visual arts. Its seven galleries host changing exhibitions featuring local, regional, national and international artists.
The Turchin Center is located at 423 West King St., in Boone. Regular hours are 10 a.m. – 6 p.m., Tues. – Thurs. and Saturday, and Noon – 8 p.m., Friday. The Center is closed Sunday and Monday, and observes all university holidays. Admission is always free, although donations are gratefully accepted.For general inquiries, to be added to the mailing or e-news list, to obtain donor program details or to schedule a tour, call 828-262-3017, e-mail turchincenter@appstate.edu or visit tcva.org. The Turchin Center can also be followed on Facebook @TurchinCenter.
You must be logged in to post a comment.