On Friday night, August 5th, as part of the Downtown Boone Art Crawl the Watauga Arts Council located in the Jones House at 604 W. King Street will have new exhibits and an opening reception from 6:30pm until 8:00pm with refreshments and is open to the public. Please join us to welcome all of these talented artists to the Watauga County Arts Council on Friday evening. Remember that the Galleries are now open on Saturdays from 10:00am until 2:00pm if you can’t make it on Friday evening or weekday afternoons.

In the Mazie Jones Gallery we will feature a group show by the High Country Watermedia Society.  The High Country Watermedia Society (HCWS) was founded in 1997 here in the western mountains of North Carolina. Members include artists, art collectors, and community art enthusiasts who gather together for the creation, appreciation, and promotion of all art created using watermedia. 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. The current membership is 120.

Monthly meetings are held on the second Saturday of the month May through October at Cheap Joe’s Workshops located in the Industrial Park in Boone, NC.  Monthly meetings  are from 9:30am—noon and then from 1-4 pm they feature demonstrations and lectures by guest artists whose expertise range from hand-made paper to matting and framing. Also, collage, intaglio and relief painting, as well as various watercolor techniques and applications. A hands-on workshop either by the day’s demo artist or another invited guest artist follows each monthly meeting demonstration. The artist and workshop is announced in their monthly newsletter, High Views and News, along with other pertinent information for the group.  This Annual Exhibition at The Watauga Arts Council located in the Jones House is a juried show and sale.

The HCWS encourages artists of all levels and supports High Country art projects through an endowment in association with the Watauga County Community Foundation. To join this group or to get more information, please visit their website at www.highcountrywatermediasociety.com.

The Open Door Gallery is pleased to have the artwork of Linda Elksnin.  Representative works from four of her eight series are included in the exhibit. The textile art of the Kuna Indians influenced the Mola series. Appreciation of the nineteenth century folk artist Edward Hicks and contemporary Haitian artists are the inspiration for Elksnin’s Fantastic Animal paintings. A “moon couple” soars over landscapes in the Moon People series. Paintings in the Flower series are a contemporary interpretation of primitive American still life's. Elksnin creates her paintings by layering watercolor and gouache on a painted background. She then builds up color and texture with colored pencils.

Linda is participating in several juried art shows this summer, including Art in the Park in Blowing Rock, The Biltmore Village Art & Craft Fair in Asheville, and the Atlanta Arts Festival. She also has shown her work in Charleston, including the Piccolo Spoleto Outdoor Art Exhibit, Saul Alexander Gallery, Courtney Street Gallery at the Medical University of South Carolina, and the Halsey Institute for Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston.  Elksnin is represented by the Four Winds Collection in Beaufort, SC and the Gallery at York Hall in Yorktown, VA.

Linda Elksnin was born in Pennsylvania and grew up in New Jersey and Maryland. She has been drawing and painting since childhood and earned a BFA from Syracuse University. An interest in children with disabilities led her to earn a M.Ed. and Ph.D. in special education from the University of Virginia. Linda is now a full time artist after retiring from The Citadel, where she was a full professor in the School of Education. She divides her time between Charleston, South Carolina and Vilas, North Carolina. 

Our featured artist in the Serendipity Gallery this month is Marilyn Herman. Marilyn lives in Linville Harbor and is inspired by the beauty that surrounds her in our beautiful mountains here. She is a self taught artist using layers of vibrant acrylics. She loves color, texture, and the many shadows cast upon the purest of forms.