Winter exhibitions at Turchin Center

Appalachian State University’s Turchin Center for the Visual Arts (TCVA) will thank its members at a private reception and sneak preview of exhibitions Nov. 6 from 7-9 p.m.

The center’s staff and advisory board will host the evening. Featuring 20th century artists, exhibitions of the works of Andy Warhol and Robert Motherwell open Nov. 7 at 7 p.m. at the Fall Celebration, a part of the Downtown Boone Art Gallery Crawl.

“This will be a great opportunity for the community to experience an evening of great art, food and music,” said Hank Foreman, assistant vice chancellor for arts & cultural affairs, and director and chief curator of the TCVA.
“Special plans include a DJ spinning great Warhol heyday ’70s music and one of Andy’s favorite pop — a photo booth. The Vertigo Jazz Project will provide amazing sounds in the West Wing. We always participate in the regular Downtown Boone Gallery Crawls on first Fridays, and host Exhibition Celebrations each July, November and March. These celebrations coincide with times we have exhibitions in all galleries, making each celebration a special occasion for the community.”

Marking its 20th anniversary, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts established The Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program to broaden access to the artist’s photographic work. The foundation donated more than 28,500 original Polaroids and silver gelatin prints to college and university museums and galleries throughout the United States. The TCVA is a recipient of 104 Polaroids and 50 black-and-white photographs, forming the bulk of this exhibition.

According to the Warhol Foundation, “While the Polaroid portraits reveal Warhol’s profound and frank engagement with the personality in front of his lens, the gelatin silver prints point to his extraordinary compositional skill, his eye for detail, and his compulsive desire to document the world around him. Taken together, these photographs survey the scope of Warhol’s aesthetic interests and demonstrate the reach of his curious, far-roaming eye.”

In addition to the photographs, the center has gathered other materials which celebrate the life and work of the 20th century artist. Designed to be fun and informative, the installation plays off the larger-than-life persona that would surpass art world influence to become a mass media and marketing phenomenon.

“Andy Warhol: A Photographic Legacy Recent Gifts to the Turchin Center Permanent Collection,” runs Nov. 7-Feb. 7 in the main gallery east wing.

“Robert Motherwell Lost in Form, Found in Line” explores Robert Motherwell’s working process and spirit that existed in the ambiance of his studio. Most who view any artist’s work have no visual image or snapshot of the artist’s studio life. For Motherwell, his work environment was a self-sustaining sanctuary, continually expansive, pregnant with the possibilities of how a word, phrase or poem provided a whole language of movements and reactions for the artist. This exhibition paints a picture of this feeling and viewers will continually engage in a constant journey through line and form. Included in this exhibition are groupings of prints, unique prints and monotypes, illuminating how this artist explored and experimented with different mediums and relationships from one discipline to another. The TCVA collaborated with Charlotte’s Jerald Melberg Gallery and partnered with Motherwell’s Dedalus Foundation to bring this exhibition to ASU. The exhibit opens Nov. 7 and runs through Feb. 7.

A 20th Century Masters Class will be held Nov. 19, noon-1 p.m., in the TCVA lecture hall. Motherwell and Warhol will be the focus of this presentation and gallery talk.

“Tyler Deal, An Alumna Shares Her Recent Work” also opens Nov. 7 and runs through Feb. 7 in the Catwalk Community Gallery, East Wing. Deal, who began her undergraduate education at the University of Montana, earned her bachelor of fine arts degree from ASU in 2004 and her master of fine arts degree from the Pratt Art Institute in 2006, she then returned to Boone where she continues to create.

This exhibition provides an opportunity to see how the artist’s work and concepts evolved during her graduate studies. She has placed a growing number of works in private collections and is focusing on expanding her exhibition resume. In much of her recent work, Deal breaks away from the two-dimensionality of the canvas to experiment with mixed media and non conventional approaches. This is the most recent exhibition featuring students or alumni from ASU’s department of art.

Opening Dec. 5 and exhibiting through April 18 is “Hope Remains – Parts I & II, Charlie Brouwer.” A frequent image/object appearing in this artist’s work during the last two decades is the ladder. Brouwer said, “…we build and repair with ladders; we pick fruit from ladders; we rescue with ladders. With ladders we reach over, rise up and transcend.” Not only has the artist crafted ladders as components of his sculpture, he has created structures with everyday ladders borrowed from communities. For example, in a castle in Poland, through its leaning, entangled, dependent construction, the ladder created a rich metaphor for the life of a community.

In this exhibition, the TCVA presents both drawings and sculptures. Of his drawings, Brouwer sais, “Drawing is a way for me to think out loud … images, symbols, places, events and memories come to mind and are placed in the context of the composition and then others appear in response. I usually write on the drawings in an additional attempt to make the thought, feeling or belief into something that seems true, beautiful and complete.”

A native of Holland, Mich., Brouwer currently lives in rural Floyd County, Va. He completed his master of arts in painting and his master of fine arts in sculpture at Western Michigan University. In 1974, Brouwer started teaching high school in Australia, then returned to teach high school in Michigan in 1976. In 1987, he accepted a position as professor of art at Radford University and remained there for the rest of his teaching career.

And if you haven’t experienced it yet, there’s still time for the continuing international exhibition “Ancient Philosophy/Contemporary Art, Asian Artists from China, Japan, Korea and the United States.”

TCVA’s staff worked with international artist and educator Kichung Lizee and Korean doctoral student Kim Jue-Whe to curate the exhibition with more than 25 artists presenting works influenced by traditional calligraphy and three philosophical principles: yin and yang – or unity in opposites; wabi sabi – or the art of finding beauty in imperfection, understanding in nature and accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay and death; and stillness/movement – or within stillness, there is movement and within movement, there is stillness.

This exhibition is open through Nov. 15, in the Mayer Gallery, Galleries A and B, west wing. There will be an artists’ panel discussion Nov. 7 at 6 p.m., prior to the Fall Celebration reception.

Opening Dec. 5 and on exhibit in gallery B, west wing through April 18 is “God City, They Say You Can’t Please Everybody...” God City is a young artists’ co-op founded in 2005 with a simple, online plan – to educate, enlighten, assist and entertain people through artistic expression. The group comprises eight artists working in a variety of media and approaches. Members include de’Angelo Dia-Bethune (an ASU alum), Meika Fields, John Hairston, Marcus Kiser, Donavan Lyons, Wolly Vinyl, Antoine William and Jen Woods.

Heavily influenced by hip hop culture, comics and history, group members set out to make original, engaging artwork that challenges the viewer. Currently, all God city members are practicing and/or teaching artists in Charlotte.

A reception for the exhibition will be March 6 from 7-9 p.m.

The Turchin Center, 423 West King St., Boone, is open 10 a.m.-6 p.m., Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday, and Noon-8 p.m., Friday. The center is closed Sunday and Monday and observes all university holidays. There is no admission charge, although donations are gratefully accepted.