LITTLE ROCK — Only 30 artists are represented in the 58th annual Delta Exhibition at the Arkansas Arts Center, and two have ties to the River Valley & Ozark Edition coverage area. David Bailin and Cathy Wester are among those selected for this year’s show, which will continue through Aug. 28.
Bailin, 62, of Little Rock, teaches art part time at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway. He is no stranger to art patrons familiar with the Delta Exhibition. He has won the Grand Award, which is the top award in the show, three times, and has received the Delta Award several times, including this year with LAMP. He has a second piece in this year’s show as well — SOFA.
Wester, 54, of Conway, is a relative newcomer to the art scene in central Arkansas, having moved to Faulkner County about five years ago from Nebraska. This was the first time she submitted work to the Delta Exhibition. She has two pieces in the show — Western Sunlight 2 and Western Sunlight 3.
Guest juror Elizabeth K. Garvey of New York City, co-founder and owner of Garvey-Simon Art Access Inc., selected, in most cases, two works by each of the 30 artists she juried into the show after viewing more than 1,000 works by 457 artists. Garvey announced the winners during a lecture titled Relationship on June 9 at a special reception and exhibition preview.
In her juror’s statement, Garvey, who is from Missouri — the Show Me State — said she wanted the artists “to show me who they were.”
“I wanted them to show me their distinct voice,” she said. “I wanted to see the relationship of one piece to the other, if they submitted three pieces (artists may submit up to three piece to the annual show). Most often, I selected two works by all the artists I chose.
“Relationship between works was key. My aim was to validate the artists chosen by facilitating a broader presence and context for the work in this show.”
Garvey encouraged the collectors and artists in the audience to unite.
“Tell the public about your art,” she said, urging artists to create websites and use Facebook and other forms of social media to tell their stories. “Participate in exhibitions … create mailing lists … hold studio visits. These are some of the most important things you can do,” she said. “To get your work seen, … create a dialogue with the community. Take action. Empower yourselves.”
Garvey mentioned the Delta des Refusés exhibit, which will end July 17 at the Thea Foundation in North Little Rock and includes works by artists who were not selected for the Delta Exhibition.
“The Delta des Refusés is a great idea,” she said. “It’s empowering. … I give a nod to the people who organized that show.”
In announcing the Delta Award-winners (two were given), Garvey said, “David Bailin’s work LAMP is a perfect example” of why she generally chose two works by the same artist.
“Both works are really exquisite,” she said. Bailin’s second painting in the show is SOFA.
“I had a tough time choosing between the two,” Garvey said. “There is a lot of erasure in both works, as well as mixed media, including coffee, on prepared paper.
“LAMP shows kind of an ebb and flow. The figures look somber. … the lamp is right in the center. There is beautiful color in it. … Go up close and take a look at that.”
Bailin received a $750 cash prize as a Delta Award-winner with LAMP.
“I appreciate the award,” Bailin said.
“These two drawings are from a new series,” he said. Bailin calls the new series The Erasing.
He said he created these new works by “drawing and erasing, drawing and erasing.” He used charcoal, pastel [and oil for SOFA] and coffee on prepared paper to create these large pieces of art; both measure 79 by 84 inches.
“They basically deal with old age … dementia … Alzheimer’s,” he said. “This is what is happening now with my father.”
In Bailin’s artist’s statement about these drawings, he said the “the back-and-forth process of drawing in and erasing out, having an idea or image revealing itself one minute only to fall back into obscurity the next, mimics what I see happening to my father in his effort to recognize in the moment his own personal narrative and memories.
“Only ghosts are left.”
Bailin, who has also been an adjunct faculty member at Hendrix College in Conway, was born in Sioux City Falls, South Dakota. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting in 1976 from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Master of Arts degree in creative arts in 1984 from Hunter College in New York City.
As a first-timer in the Delta Exhibition, Wester said she was “very surprised and delighted” when she received notification that two of her paintings had been accepted to this year’s show.
“I didn’t expect to get in,” she said.
“These paintings came from a photographic series I worked on from 2009 to 2011 in Omaha, Nebraska,” she said. “I enjoyed watching the light and breeze through the windows change the shapes of light and managed to capture that feeling in the photographs.
“I challenged myself to communicate to the viewer the same feeling in a painting from the photo. The next step in my evolution of these photographs is to turn the images into fiber collages and then full-circle those fiber collages into photographs.”
Wester has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in art from the University of South Dakota at Vermillion. She said she took drawing in college but not painting.
“I am basically a self-taught painter,” she said.
Before painting, her main art form was photography. She had her own photography business for 10 years.
“I am swinging back to photography after four years of painting, drawing and fiber collage, and am enjoying working as a full-time artist,” she said. “Now with the addition of a wonderful Giclee printer to my studio and time for a fresh artistic vision to be born, I am ready to explore photography again.
“I make art because I have to make art. I don’t know how my artistic vision works and fear that if I analyze the process, instead of just allowing it to happen, I will lose the ability to know without knowing.”
Wester is a member of the Conway League of Artists and participated in its recent spring show, receiving a third-place award for a drawing and an honorable mention for a photograph. In 2014, Wester was selected for the Small Works on Paper exhibit and received a purchase award from the Arkansas Arts Council, which sponsors that annual juried competition.
The 58th annual Delta Exhibition, which includes works by artists from Arkansas and surrounding states, is on display in the Jeannette Edris Rockefeller and Townsend Wolf galleries at the Arkansas Arts Center, Ninth and Commerce streets in Little Rock. There is no admission charge. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays. The gallery is closed Mondays and most holidays.
For more information, call (501) 372-4000 or visit the website arkansasartscenter.org.