Thursday, December 5, 2013

Tour Artists’ Studios on Saturday & Sunday Across the Mountain

The 2013 annual Holiday Tour of Artists’ Studios and Galleries, sponsored by the Craft Artists of Southern Tennessee and Tennessee Arts and Crafts Association, will be Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 7–8, at locations across the Mountain. Thirty-five artists will show work for sale at 13 locations around Sewanee and Monteagle. The tour includes clay, metal, fiber, jewelry, painting, wood and soap. 

The tour is open 10 a.m.–5 p.m., Saturday, Dec. 7, and noon–5 p.m., Sunday, Dec. 8. Student-designed art, cards and gift items (some of which benefit outreach efforts), will be for sale in the St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School art studio, adjacent to the Gallery. 

As part of the event, the St. Andrew’s-Sewanee Gallery’s “Full CAST” exhibit features the work of artists on tour, as well as SAS faculty and staff. 

Greg Pond was the juror for the exhibit. Winners of the Merit Awards ($100 each) were Archie Stapleton, Merissa Tobler and Susan Church. Honorable Mention was awarded to Ollie Durant, Claire Reishman and Sanford McGee.


In reviewing the works, Pond said, “This year’s Full CAST exhibition showcases a diverse range of techniques, media and ideas. It contains many impressive works of very high quality. After surveying the exhibition, I determined that the merit awards would go to the artists who matched high levels of technical skill and design with equal measures of ingenuity and experimentation. Each artist seemed to be pushing their own work forward while maintaining high standards for quality in both the craftsmanship and design.”

About the winners, Pond said, “I found remarkable clarity in the formal relationships within each piece. Through their work, each artist displays a certain insight that allows them to exploit the potential of both form and material without the sort of effusive embellishment that often distracts from the essential qualities of both. A successful balance of mastery of technique and material/formal speculation is evidence of sustained and thoughtful attention with the hand and the eye. These works conveyed that their creators were continuing to experiment, and in doing so, contributing to their field.

“Creativity and innovation are born through a rigorous and sustained process of making. Getting your hands dirty breeds artistic invention if you are open to the possibilities your practice reveals and ambitious enough to pursue them. Each of these three artists seems to be sufficiently aware of his or her processes to be responsive to lessons learned while the work is being made. My hunch is that they allowed their intuition to guide them as much as their prior knowledge and experience.” 
The works that received honorable mentions possessed either exceptional formal qualities or novel approaches to working with the given media. 

Follow the bright yellow signs across the Mountain to see the unique variety of artists and artwork on the tour, including works in pottery, jewelry, glass, wood, textiles, paintings, prints and much more. The following artists are part of the tour: 

Bob Askew, watercolor and oil; Becky Braddock, pottery; Tom and Susan Church, wood; Lisa Dorney, fused glass; Olive B. “Lolly” Durant, marbling on paper and fabric; Anne Griffin, knitting; Shore Griffin, jewelry; Barbara Hughes, sculpture and painting; Sherri Warner Hunter, concrete and mosaic sculptures; Carol Kimmons, ceramics;Jasper King, chainsaw-carved wooden bowls;Marjorie Langston, glass; Cheryl Lankhaar, oil on canvas;

Mary L. Lynch, hand-built functional clay; Bill Mauzy, wood; Mary Beth McClure, glass; Mary McElwain, concrete and silver-plate flatware; G. Sanford McGee, etched copper and mixed media; Denise Miller, pastels, collage, watercolor; June B. Miller, lapidary, jewelry; Sherry Nickell, glass; Dan Pate, oil paintings; Ben Potter, cut copper figures; Jan Quarles, textiles and natural dyes; Claire D. Reishman, clay; Thomas Spake, blown glass; Archie Stapleton, ceramics; Jeanie Stephenson, bronze sculpture; Merissa Tobler, pottery; Connie Ulrich, jewelry; Sarah Vance, goat milk soaps; Ursula Vann, clay; Lynne Vogel, textiles; and Linda White, fiber.

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