Works by Elena Barna at City Gallery in May

Works by Elena Barna will be on display at the North Charleston City Gallery during the month of April. Barna, winner of the 2012 North Charleston Arts Festival Design Competition, will display works in acrylic and oils featuring a variety of subjects, including her winning piece, My Muse.

The artist's work will be on display May 1-31, 2012. A free opening reception will be held at the gallery on May 5, from 10:00am-4:00pm and May 6, from 2:00pm-5:00pm. The artists will be present and the public is invited to attend.

Titled Expanding the Horizon, Barna’s first solo exhibition strives to show viewers the many sides of her art. Works on display showcase the breadth of her inspirations and will include portraits, still lifes, and nature scenes. “The first and major inspiration for my art is people,” Barna explains. “I’ve done some body painting in the past and have translated that process onto canvas.” Viewers will enjoy portraits of Marilyn Monroe and Bob Marley, as well depictions of the artist’s friends and family. Other portraits share the same style and inspiration as her winning design, featuring a beautiful woman disappearing into a mosaic atmosphere.

Another prominent source of inspiration for the artist comes from her homeland, Russia. “I’ve done some work with Russian old style painting,” she says. “In general it’s flowers and some flowery designs mainly inspired by masterpieces by Russian artist Mikhail Vrubel.”

Barna’s style is heavily inspired by the Impressionism and Post-impressionism art movements, as well as Art Nouveau. She cites Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Monet, Degas, and Alphonse Mucha as artists she admires. Preferring to work in acrylic and oil, her work features vivid colors, thick application of paint, distinctive brush strokes, and realistic subject matter, mainly people. Form and color are central to her aesthetic and shimmering surfaces and rich dabs of paint characterize her paintings.

Born in 1987 in Volgograd, Russia, Elena Barna came to Charleston in 2008 to work for the summer and learn about life in America.  To her surprise, she fell in love with the city, the Carolina Lowcountry, and resident Josh Barna.  After returning home to complete her education and the long process of legal immigration, Elena and Josh were married following her return to Charleston in 2009.  She currently lives and works in North Charleston with Josh and their bull mastiff, Phoenix.

The North Charleston City Gallery is located in the Charleston Area Convention Center with free parking and admission during regular Convention Center operating hours 9:00am-5:00pm, daily.  Inquiries regarding the artist or purchase information may be directed to the North Charleston Cultural Arts Department at (843) 740-5854. For information on additional exhibits, programs, and events, visit the Cultural Arts section of the City’s website at www.northcharleston.org. For information about the North Charleston Arts Festival visit www.NorthCharlestonArtsFest.com.

Entries Sought for 2012 North Charleston Arts Festival Judged Fine Art & Photography Competitions & Exhibitions

Fine artists and professional and amateur photographers ages 18 and up are invited to participate in the annual North Charleston Arts Festival Judged Fine Art and Judged Photography Competitions and Exhibitions, which will be on display throughout the Charleston Area Convention Center Complex May 4-12, 2012. Cash prizes are awarded for winning entries. Details for participation are available for download on the Applications page at www.NorthCharlestonArtsFest.com. The deadline for submissions is 7:00pm on Thursday, May 3, for photography, and noon on Friday, May 3, for fine art. Entry fees are $5 and $10, respectively.

Fine artists may submit work in 5 categories: Acrylic, Oil, Drawing/Pastel, Watercolor, and Mixed Media. Entries will compete for cash prizes totaling up to $4425. Awards are at the sole discretion of the juror, Kimberly H. Spears. As the Executive Director of the Anderson County Arts Council, Ms. Spears oversees the rotating gallery exhibitions in the Anderson County Arts Center. She has served as juror for art exhibitions around the state. 

Photographers may submit work in the Professional/Advanced division or Amateur division under the categories of Color or Monochrome. Entries will compete for cash prizes totally up to $1450 and are judged using the Photographic Society of America Print Guidelines. Scoring is done by three competent judges in the field of photography who will score entries using the 3-9 range of scores. Each judge will evaluate each entry as a whole, considering the areas of Impact, Composition, and Technique. However, there is no specific weighting or allotment of points for each category. This system is used efficiently and effectively by many councils, at international exhibitions, and by camera clubs. It allows an adequate qualitative separation of entries while lessening the potential for a large number of the higher scoring entries having identical scores. In the event of a tie-breaker, judges will choose the winning entry. 

Awards for both competitions will be announced at an artist reception on Friday, May 4, from 6:00-7:00pm at the Charleston Area Convention Center, located at 5001 Coliseum Drive in North Charleston. Exhibition viewing times are Saturday, May 5, 10:00am – 4:00pm; Sunday, May 6, 2:00pm – 5:00pm; Monday through Friday, May 7-11, 9:00am – 5:00pm; and Saturday, May 12, 9:00am – 12:00pm. 

The North Charleston Arts Festival, scheduled May 4-12, is one of the most comprehensive arts festivals in the Lowcountry, providing thousands of residents & visitors with a fabulous array of performances, exhibitions, and activities. The Main Event, held the first weekend in May, offers free admission and parking to over 40 performances on four stages. Other Main Event activities include exhibitions, a gem and mineral show, an antique show, children’s activities, art and crafts booth, and food court. The Arts Festival continues with over 50 free or moderately priced ticketed events throughout the week at various locations and concludes with fireworks over the Cooper River at the Grand Finale at Riverfront Park. 

For more information about the North Charleston Arts Festival, or to download applications for the Judged Fine Art and Photography Competitions and Exhibitions, visit www.NorthCharlestonArtsFest.com. For more information about other exhibition opportunities, visit http://bit.ly/culturalarts or call the City of North Charleston Cultural Arts Department office at 843-740-5854.

Melissa Walker & John Humphries at City Gallery in December

Holes Drilled in Poseidon by John Humphries

Concurrent solo exhibitions by Melissa Walker and John Humphries will be on exhibit at the North Charleston City Gallery from December 1-30, 2011. Both artists will host a free opening reception at the gallery on Thursday, December 1, 2011, from 5pm-7pm. The public is invited to attend.

Evening in New Begun Creek by Melissa Walker

Course Corrections, new work by Melissa Walker will feature the artist’s most recent series of acrylic and collage paintings. Melissa’s work is influenced by abstract expressionism and incorporates many mixed media elements, such as nautical charts and silhouettes. Her pieces illustrate the essence of the ocean and the areas around it by depicting atmospheric conditions and times of day without creating a realistic view. The viewer is brought into the work with titles that repeat locations on the charts in many of the paintings. Each piece lends itself to the individual viewer’s interpretation. “Some will see the image as a bird’s eye view, much as you would view a map or look at the earth from an airplane,” she explains. “Others will see the same painting as a landscape, with the traditional sky, horizon line and water. It is up to you to choose how you view each work of art.”

Melissa Walker is a National Board Certified art educator with over 20 years experience teaching elementary, middle, high school and adult students. She received a BA in Art Education from East Carolina University and an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks. She has continued to study painting with well known artists and instructors Robert Burridge, Bob Rankin, Joe Deguilio, Sterling Edwards, and Jack Shields. Melissa is a member of the Pastel Association of North Carolina and the North Carolina Watercolor Association, and is a long time member of the North Carolina Art Education Association. For more information, visit melissawalkerartist.com.

Drawn From Nothing features speculative design drawings in watercolour by Ohio based artist, John Humphries. Humphries’ drawings bridge the gap between architectural form and painting and combine delicate wooden constructions to maintain a tension between built form, sketches, and landform. Each piece strives to convey the character of the Midwest industrialized agrarian landscape full of built structures and machines overlain with textures maximized for crop growth, infrastructure, and the remnants of glacial and geological forces. According to Humphries, these drawings operate in three very important areas of architectural exploration. First, they address the process of making and discovering new forms and spatial relationships. Secondly, the drawings provide a way of seeing the world, particularly the most minute subject and exploring it. Finally, the physical artifacts demonstrate for the viewer a way of thinking about cities, landscape, design, and architecture in many ways, allowing the viewer to consider space and the role drawings play in capturing spatial ideas. “Concept drawings are essential to the experiences of design as love is essential to humans,” Humphries explains. “Love which, unlike sex, is not essential to propagation--one can live without it, but does not live very much. The hybrid landscapes in the drawings promise everything that is more than that which is necessary—everything that compelled immigrants to transform a wilderness and everything non-utilitarian in culture.”

Having completed degrees in Architecture and Design with a brief foray as a saucier and metal-smith, John Humphries is now a visual artist, gardener, and designer focusing on translating one media form to another. He currently directs graphic media at Miami University within the School of Fine Arts. His work has been exhibited nationwide, most notably at the Core Gallery for Biennale of the Americas (Denver, CO), Warehouse Gallery one (Peoria, IL), Dorothy Reed Gallery and Phyllis Weston Gallery (Cincinnati, OH), Gallery See (Atlanta, GA), Rosewood Gallery (Kettering, OH), and Arlington Museum of Art (Arlington, TX). For more information, visit his website at albatrossjim.com.

The North Charleston City Gallery is located in the Charleston Area Convention Center with free parking and admission during regular Convention Center operating hours 9:00AM – 5:00PM, daily.  The Gallery is staffed on Friday, Saturday, and Monday only.   Inquiries regarding artists or purchase information may be directed to the North Charleston Cultural Arts Department at (843) 740-5854. For information on additional exhibits, programs, and events, visit the Cultural Arts section of the City’s website at www.northcharleston.org.