On Friday night, September 2nd, 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 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.

The Mazie Jones Gallery is featuring the colored pencil artwork of Bob Stevens. As it is with many artists, Bob had a pretty full life before his artistic abilities came to light.  He worked for 32 years in the computer business and raised a family with his wife and four children. His mother taught a ceramics class and his mother-in-law was a painter. After Bob’s retirement his mother-in-law introduced him to oil painting and became his mentor for about 10 years before her death. Bob then studied oil painting at the Lighthouse Gallery in Tequesta, Florida under a number of talented instructors. Then about 8 years ago, he was sketching objects and people in black & white and he decided to add color. The black & white with graphite pencils and the colored pencils didn’t mix well. So, he decided to take a colored pencil class and a new learning curve began to develop.    While here in Boone, he started taking weekly lessons from John Bond, the owner of Art Mart. Colored pencil is a layering process using different colored pencils to achieve value, hue and shading. Varying the amount of pressure with a colored pencil produces the value desired.  Although he has experimented with watercolor pencils and adding watercolor to a few paintings, his goal is to produce each “painting “ using only the prismacolor colored pencils no matter what the subject —animals, structures, landscapes, people, water, or any combination thereof. Bob also enjoys writing poetry for family and friends and includes poems in greeting cards for special occasions.  Bob has exhibited recently at the Edgewater Cottage in Blowing Rock as part of the Artists in Residence series. We are so happy to have him exhibit here with us for the first time this month!

The Open Door Gallery is pleased to have the artwork of Tara Belk.  The title of her show is “Small Things –Great Love”. Tara has been living and creating art in the Blue Ridge Mountains for the past twenty years.  She grew up in Minnesota of Scandinavian descent and attended college there.   Like most children, she loved to draw from a very early age…. moving from crayons to pencils and then to paints.  She took her first oil painting class at 14 receiving the lessons as a gift from a close family friend and her mother.  Never dreaming her most enjoyable pastime could actually become a career, she focused on other studies in college.  Afterwards, moving on to Arizona where she worked, married and honed her drawing and painting skills under brilliant desert skies.  Eventually, she moved east and earned a Creative Arts Degree from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte.  Her artwork found its way into numerous exhibitions, receiving awards and a place in both private and public collections.  After visiting the Blue Ridge Mountains and sensing a deep connection, she knew she’d found her permanent home.  She now divides her time between teaching drawing, painting and pottery at her Trade, Tennessee studio and also at ASU in the Craft Enrichment Department, and creating her own personal expressions in clay, pastel, and paint.   The inspiration for her work stems from her love of the mountains, a grateful heart and a desire to honor her Creator. This exhibit consists of pottery, oil paintings, and acrylics. Tara has exhibited at the Jones House only in group shows in the past and we are excited to have her for a solo show this month!

The Serendipity Gallery’s featured artist this month is Mahala Porth. She started painting with watercolors 8 years ago. Mahala is from Elkin, NC and after living in several areas of the country has settled in Blowing Rock with her husband, Jack. You will enjoy seeing what she has accomplished in this relatively short period of time.