WAC Gallery Information for August 2009

The Jones House Community Center is the place to be Friday, August 7th beginning at 5 p.m. for an evening of the arts – both performance and visual.

As always throughout the summer, Watauga Arts Council’s Summer Concert on the Lawn will begin at 5 p.m. Friday’s concert features Amantha Mill and Upright and Breathing.

Immediately following the concerts, everyone is invited to attend a reception to honor the month’s gallery artists.

The Mazie Jones Gallery exhibit for the month is the High Country Watermedia Society’s (HCWS) Annual Juried Exhibit in the Jones House. HCWS was founded in 1997 with a primary focus on creating, promoting, discussing and learning about artwork made from water-soluble materials, such as watercolors. Other water media examples include acrylic, gouache, casein, pencil, pastel, pen & ink, and the newest transition media such as water-soluble oil paints.

Members include artists, art collectors, and community art enthusiasts who gather together for the creation, appreciation, and promotion of all art created using water media. Although located in Watauga County, HCWS members are represented from all around North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Florida. Members also come from a variety of professions and backgrounds – from professional artists, art students, art instructors, hobbyists, and art enthusiasts and collectors.

Members meet regularly May through October for demonstrations and to share their enthusiasm for art.

HCWS provides a number of venues in which to show member’s art. In addition, HCWS sponsors at least two local exhibitions of member’s work every season, both juried and non-juried, offering prizes in several categories. The Annual Exhibition at Jones House is an example of the member’s juried show and sale.

This year’s exhibition at the Jones House will offer awards to the top three paintings plus honorable mentions winners. Gary Nemcosky, an Art professor at Appalachian State University since 1991, will serve as juror for this show.Prior to coming to Boone, Nemcosky was an adjunct instructor at The Art Academy of Cincinnati and a gallery assistant manager at the Miller Gallery in Cincinnati.

In the upstairs Open Door Gallery, a class from the Western Watauga Center in Sugar Grove, presents a rug hooking exhibit. The craft of rug hooking has been developed over the years.  The participants learning the craft at the Western Watauga Center are engaged in hooking with various materials including wool strips, recycled t-shirts and yarn.  The craft is believed to have been developed in Europe and brought to America and Canada where settlers hooked rugs on burlap backing with rag scraps.  Various backings are now used for the rugs, including burlap, monks cloth, cotton warp cloth or linen, with designs drawn or traced onto the backing.  Colors are decided upon and the process begins.

Ms. Kathleen Moore, 85, is the class instructor.   While growing up in Watauga County, she learned the craft of rug hooking as a young girl. Her family hooked rugs and shipped them to Pennsylvania and New York, and in turn would receive money and materials for more rugs.  Kathleen is keeping the art of rug hooking alive by showing her students creative ways of “making do” with materials around the home.  If she needs a larger frame for a particular piece, she gets out her hammer and nails and makes it herself. 

Class members include Margaret Burkett Oliver, a native of the Mabel community; Shirley Frierson, of the Sugar Grove Community; Cheryl Roberts a native of New York who has lived in the High Country for 30 years; and Martha Deal, of the Mabel community.

Also on hand the night of the reception, June W. Bare will be signing copies of her first novel, All Things, set in the 1950’s.  A retired nurse, Bare lives on a Christmas tree farm in Western North Carolina with her husband, Larry. Although the author grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, not unlike Kenbridge in her story, her mother was a native North Carolinian, and June has a heart for the mountains. She is a member of High Country Writers, American Christian Writers Association, Behind the Stacks Poetry Group, and is active in her church.  She has written free lance articles in All About Women and has published poetry in The Word newspaper.  She has also self-published a book of poetry, Quiet My Heart and a children's book, The Red Sled

The concert and gallery reception are free and the public is invited and encouraged to attend.

This evening of the arts happily coincides with the downtown Boone First Friday Art Crawl.

For those unable to attend the opening reception, the Watauga Arts Council gallery exhibits are available for viewing Tuesday, August 4 until Friday, August 28 from noon to 5 p.m., Tuesdays through Fridays. The galleries are also open Thursdays from 7:30 to 11 p.m. during the acoustic jams and on Fridays from 5 to 7 p.m. during the concerts on the lawn.

The Arts Council galleries are sponsored in part by Cheap Joe’s Art Stuff and Grassroots Funds of the North Carolina Arts Council. The WAC’s offices and galleries are located in downtown Boone at the Jones House Community & Cultural Center, owned by the town of Boone.