Urban Sight-paintings by Susan Maakestad and Beth Edwards
- Ongoing: until Friday, September 24, 2010
- Monday: 11:30am
- Wednesday: 11:30am
- Friday: 11:30am
- Where: East Arkansas Community College, Forrest City
- Cost: Not available
- Age limit: Not available
East Arkansas Community College in Forrest City has announced a new exhibit in the EACC Fine Arts Center Gallery. Urban Sight-paintings by Susan Maakestad and Beth Edwards, both of Memphis, will run from September 1-24. The show will highlight the works of these two nationally recognized artists who have very different visions of the world and their reflective bodies of work.
Daily hours for the Gallery will be Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 11:30 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. or as scheduled for special group tours. There is no charge for admission.
Susan Maakestad earned her Master of Fine Arts in painting from The University of Iowa in 1987 and a Bachelor of Arts (magna cum laude) and Master of Arts from Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington. She is Associate Professor of Art at Memphis College of Art, where she has taught since 1997. She was awarded a regional National Endowment for the Arts fellowship from Arts Midwest in 1988. She has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been included in the national publication "New American Paintings" and The Painting Center in New York's online "Art File." Her work has been exhibited nationally. She is represented by The Rymer Gallery in Nashville and the Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis. She is also the long time radio host of "House Bayou" on WEVL 89.9 FM in Memphis.
“I am interested in the spaces between things, the unnoticed marginal spaces in the urban landscape,” said Maakestad. “Likewise, as a painter I like painting in that unsettling place between abstraction and naturalism. I find inspiration in ordinary urban places such as parking lots and intersections. I am attracted to the anonymous and ubiquitous concrete and asphalt backdrop one finds in television's Cops.”
“Merely imitating the natural world does not interest me. I am moved by the internal logic of paintings themselves, a world where things make sense somehow. Or almost don't. Where everything lives and breathes in tension held together by beauty and paint.”
Beth Edwards received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and Master of Fine Arts from Indiana University in Bloomington. She has exhibited her work at numerous national and regional art shows and galleries including Mallory and Wurtzburger Galleries at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens-Memphis, Scott Richards Gallery in San Francisco, the University of Louisiana in Monroe, the Tory Folliard Gallery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and The Centre for Living Arts in Mobile, Alabama.
“I approach the subject of dolls and toys from the vantage point of a still life painter, long involved with the domestic realm and the types of objects that originate there,” said Edwards. “Like most who have dealt with this subject, I am fascinated by the way in which toys, particularly dolls, exemplify both the animate and inanimate spheres of existence. While this captivating trait accounted for much of my initial interest, I have since moved into a more critical, questioning phase with this subject. What are the particular cultural concerns embedded within these playthings and in what ways is a toy an attempt to imprint those perspectives upon children? Most importantly as a person who operates visually, I am drawn to these objects because I cannot comprehend the decision-making process that has gone into their creation. To me, they are truly enigmatic.”
“These paintings record and commemorate the overblown sentimentality, unsettling narratives and peculiar characterizations that particular toys exemplify. I wish for these images to elicit a memorable and evocative quality through ineffable means - to provide unexpected complexity and weight to these seemingly innocuous things,” said Edwards.
For more information about Urban Sight, please call 870-633-4480 ext. 352.
This event was posted Aug. 15, 2010 and last updated Aug. 19, 2010
