Art Exhibitionists
Local artists take their private spaces public this weekend as part of the Creative Spaces Open Studio Tour
Amanda Greene Staff Writer
Visitors to Jodie Rippy's newly built art studio at 705 Colonial Drive sometimes compare it to a church. Its clerestory windows and vaulted ceilings make you feel calm, like praying.
Rippy's cool with that.
"I'm a Christian, and this is kind of like a sanctuary," she said of the space she shares with her daughter, Wrenn Dorosko. "I like that feel about it."
Art studios for many artists are their creative sanctuaries – where they retreat to express their artistic ideals.
Dreams Center for Arts Education is giving the public a peek into those spaces with the new Creative Spaces Open Studio Tour. Proceeds benefit Dreams, a nonprofit that provides arts classes for disadvantaged youth. It's 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday and noon-4 p.m. Sunday and includes 11 studios of such artists as painters, glass blowers, weavers and ceramists.
Dreams also wants the tour to be an opportunity for children to learn about a working artist's life, so kids up to age 18 get in free.
"We want to show kids that this can be a life choice," said Heather Wilson, communications director of Dreams Center. "You can choose to be an artist."
Here's what you'll see.
Dreams Center
for Arts Education
515 Ann St.
The nonprofit youth development program serves about 500 children a week, the most ever, Wilson said. Children attend 65 artist-taught classes ranging from pottery, African drumming, ballet and photography at 20 area sites. Local artists teaching classes there include weaver Melony Connor, African drummer Cheick Sissoko and papermaker Fritzi Huber. During the tour, the center will offer art projects for children. Upcoming Dreams programs include the Spring Showcase on May 20 at the Community Arts Center.
Acme Art Studios
This industrial artist co-op includes studios for 13 local artists. On any given day, visitors might encounter sculptor Karen Crouch welding a large steel turtle, Pam Toll painting her fantastical, layered oil pieces or Sandra Ihly working on her latest mixed media piece.
Independent Art Company
815 Princess St. & 19 N. Ninth St.
This artist co-op has two buildings with funky titles like Wabi-Sabi Warehouse and Jengo's Playhouse housing 14 working artists, a screening room and the Cucalorus Film and Video Library. Before summer hits, you'll find Martha Edgerton and Ted Humphrey in their glass-blowing studio in Jengo's with a 2,000-degree fire pit glowing to melt orange blobs of glass, and other hot implements to shape and blow it. "It's an adventure and the realization of a dream," for both of them, Edgerton said. "We just can't wait to get down here each week." Across the street, at Wabi-Sabi, Susan Kranyik sewed furiously to make enough vinyl purses to sell during the tour. 10 percent of proceeds go to help Dreams, where she teaches.
Plein Air Studio
Virginia Wright-Frierson's backyard,
1619 Princess St.
See several local artists painting on easels out in the open air.
Virginia Wright-Frierson
Renovating her family's large two-car garage into an art studio, Wright-Frierson used the space to paint the large canvas murals of tall trees that she installed in Columbine High School and to plan The Minnie Evans Memorial Garden in Airlie Gardens. She modeled the bottle house sculpture at Airlie from her own little bottle creation in her back yard.
Kay Ballard
3711 Reston Court
(off Independence Boulevard)
Kay Ballard has created a little extension of heaven in her former two-car garage – now a green-tiled art studio where she works in pastels and oils and paints some birdhouses to look like Mt. Lebanon Chapel. "If I had a bed out here, I'd sleep here. I love it," she said. Her studio walls are filled with inspirational paintings from friends and her grandchildren. The studio opens into a little walled patio garden full of spring blooms. During the tour, visitors can sip lemonade and nibble cookies in her garden and make their own pastel creation in her studio.
Gayle Tustin
3842 Edgewood Road (in Lincoln Forest)
Gayle Tustin thinks of her sculpture and painting studio as a haven. One of the founders of Acme Art, Tustin has three kilns; glaze-making, clay-making and sculpting areas; and a painting area where she works in ink, oils and mixed media. The days of the tour, Tustin plans to be working in clay on a relief sculpture. Her work is on display at T.A.G. in Lumina Station in a show called Home and Abroad through May 9.
Donald Furst
UNCW lithography studio, Kenan Hall
Lithographer Donald Furst creates and teaches in his studio in the art department at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. The studio features all types of lithography (a centuries old printing process), including screen-printing, etching, relief and wood-cuts. This semester his students are learning about stone lithography, which involves drawing on specially-prepared smooth limestone, and processing the drawings and printing from the stones.
Melony Nye Connor
Loom weaver Melony Connor has always worked in her home. She has two floor looms and has been a production craft artist and apparel designer in handwoven textile crafts since the late 1980s. Now she shares her artform with a class of girls at Dreams once a week. During the tour, she will bring her looms into her yard to weave for visitors "so it's a stop where you can see an artist at work who is also a teacher at Dreams." Students from her Dreams class will weave in the garden with her on Sunday.
Exhibition of Dreams'
students' artwork
at Port City Java
Corner of Fourth and Chestnut streets
The exhibition includes a sampling of Dreams' visual arts classes, including masks, collages, mosaics, abstract paintings, baskets, photography and wall-hangings. Some of the art is for sale, and part of the proceeds go back to the Dreams students.
Amanda Greene: 343-2365
Amanda.greene@starnewsonline.com
It's a weekend of art tours.
Fourth Friday Gallery Nights – a monthly downtown gallery hop – starts up again on Friday, with a few new galleries included this year. (Future Fourth Friday dates are: May 26, June 23 and July 28.)
Merrimon Kennedy, owner of New Elements Gallery and Fourth Friday organizer, said she began getting calls about the annual event in January.
"We have continued to develop this event, now in its fourth year, and have a great lineup of very diverse art venues," she wrote in an email. "It's nice to know that it has become an eagerly anticipated event!"
Here are the participating galleries, and a little of what you'll see at each one. (A free shuttle runs between the galleries.)
Barouke, 119 S. Water St. – exotic wood products and art pieces
Bottega Art & Wine, 208 N. Front St. – contemporary art from No Boundaries International Art Colony
Corporate Canvas, 107 S. Front St. – contemporary art from local, regional and national artists, including new work by Barbara Scalia, Anne Cunningham and Sarah Atkinson
Crescent Moon, 322 Nutt St. in the Cotton Exchange – glass pieces and art gifts
Era, 523 S. Third St. – contemporary art and furniture, paintings by Dave Sinclair.
Independent Art Company, 19 N. Ninth St. – contemporary art and working studios, including circus-themed paintings by Wendy Kowalski.
New Elements Gallery, 216 N. Front St. – a mixture of regional artists. New show is Observations; Line, Color & Form, an exhibit of figurative works of Cary artist Richard Garrison and abstract paintings by Nancy Tuttle May of Durham,
The Golden Gallery, 322 Nutt St. in the Cotton Exchange – local coastal art, current exhibits include Waterscapes, watercolors by Mary Ellen Golden, and Fish Images and photography by John W. Golden.
The Wilmington Gallery, 225 S. Water St. in Chandler's Wharf – member artists from the Wilmington Art Association. Current featured artist is Bob Rogers.
The WHQR Gallery, 254 N. Front. St. – public radio station's gallery featuring local artists. Current collage paintings by Sandra Ihly make up the latest exhibit, The Red Piano.
Three Hounds Gallery, 29 S. Front St. – new gallery opening in May
What: Creative Spaces Open Studio Tour When: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday and noon- 4 p.m. Sunday Tickets: $7 for adults. Free for kids up to age 18. Tickets and maps available at Dreams (515 Ann St.), Rippy Automotive (4951 New Centre Dr.), New Elements Gallery (216 N. Front St.) and the Wilmington Gallery (225 S. Water St.). Details: 772-1501
wanna go?