Posts Tagged ‘mixed media’

Sharon Stackpole is mixed media artist.  Her works contain bright colors and different layers adding texture and depth.  Her creations have a theme of happiness and joy that are very abstract.  Stackpole’s art is an exploration of joy and should be enjoyed by all.

Early Life
Stackpole is originally from Kittanning, Pennsylvania, but grew up in West Virginia and considers it her hometown.  She received her artistic training at Fairmont State and West Virginia University.  Although she is done with school, she loves to read and study as much as possible.  Stackpole stated, “I am never finished learning, and the Internet is wonderful for providing an ever-improving pool of resources, techniques and information.”

As a child Sharon’s family was incredibly supportive of her artistic talents.  Her earliest artistic experience was of her gluing her wooden alphabet blocks together at age four.  Her whole family was baffled that she was ruining her blocks, but all she wanted to do was make a sculpture for her grandmother who was coming to visit.  She also used to collect old Cool Whip containers with water and paint and set them around her bedroom.  She has always been fascinated by colors and is still mixing and creating wonderful varieties of color in her art today.

Inspiration/Admiration
Stackpole’s art is welcoming and expresses joy.  She exclaimed, “The best part of art is how we can retool the imperfections in life and turn them into beauty.”  Ever since she was an art student at WVU Stackpole has loved Charles Jupiter Hamilton.  This love for Hamilton is very obvious because she loves color and whimsical designs.   Her pieces range from simple watercolors and oil paints, to crazy mixed media creations.  Basically art is Stackpole’s love and anything and everything can become her next creation.

Current/Future Work
Currently, Sharon Stackpole is working on a series of glass panels that where taken from a deconstructed home.  She is building a mosaic from these pieces, but she is still not sure what they will turn into.  She stated, ” I’m not entirely sure what they will evolve into, but then again, I never am — the pieces take on lives of their own as I work.”

Today Stackpole has reached her life goal and is now showing her art in Charleston, West Virginia.  She would also like her work to be shown in the state museum, which has been her dream since age nine.  Most importantly, she is a strong advocate for having art education in elementary schools. She believes that kids are taught that drawing a straight line, copying an image perfectly, or staying “between the lines” are the only path to art and would love to influence a change in this.

Currently, Stackpoles favorite piece is a glass panel that she has just finished. She wanted to experiment with color theory and was quite happy with the end result. This piece is not hanging in a gallery yet, but many of her works are.  Her pieces are currently hanging in the Purple Moon on 906 Quarrier Street, Charleston West Virginia, which every one should come and enjoy.

Dick Allowatt, was born in Fairmont, West Virginia who lived in a small coal-mining town in Marion County before moving to Charleston when he was five years old.

Mr. Allowatt is an outstanding artist who specializes in mixed media and collages.  Devoting over thirty years making art, it is quite clear that Mr. Allowatt has a profound love and appreciation of art.

Allowatt is a graduate of Charleston Catholic High School, and encourages all CCHS art students to take advantage of every opportunity to enjoy local art and to get involved in the local art scene.

Early Life
Mr. Allowatt grew up creating art in his early years.  He remembers drawing popular cartoon characters for his grade and school classmates.  When I asked him about how he learned art, he remarked, “I was basically self-taught, grabbing a class here and there throughout my life.”  He also said that his family always encouraged him growing up, but art wasn’t something that was taken seriously as a livelihood.  He was very self-motivated and enjoyed creating art.  Mr. Allowatt said if he could have changed one thing, he would have grown up in a more artistic environment where he would have pursued art more aggressively.  In a nutshell, Mr. Allowatt is very satisfied with his support on the home front and has been inspired by everyone around him.

Inspiration/Admiration
Allowatt is inspired by works of other artists.  He says he learns from their techniques and experiences and uses what he learns to create new art.  He is also inspired by overlooked found elements that can be the catalyst for new works of art.  He enjoys shopping at flea markets, traveling and attending art events, which are all great places for new inspiration.  He also says, “Whenever I feel I’m having artist block, I may skim through my collection of books on artists I admire including Fred Otnes, Joseph Cornell, Robert Rauschenberg, Nick Bantock and others.”

Current/Future Work
Mr. Allowatt plans on continuing his mixed media and collage art in the present and near future.  In his spare time, he enjoys traveling to new places and discovering local art and artifacts and also playing guitar.  Mr. Allowatt has high hopes for the future and is striving to create the best art he possibly can.  He truly is a talented man.

Allowatt has exhibited his art all over the Charleston area, and his work is currently part of the West Virginia Art and Craft Guild Juried Exhibition which has been traveling around the state.  Allowatt has exhibited at Taylor Books Gallery in downtown Charleston several times, the Huntington Galleries and recently won the top award in the National Collage Society Annual Juried Show which was held in Longmont, Colorado in November 2008.

Rebecca Recco Burch is a mixed media artist in the Charleston Valley.   She is also an Art teacher at Charleston Catholic High School.   She recognized her artistic ability at a young age and has continued her artwork throughout her life.   Ever since she was little she has had a strong passion for art and what it has to offer.   She views art as a universal language, something everyone can understand.   Anyone can create or understand art, and it is for this reason she feels so connected to it.   Rebecca Burch is a life-inspired artist.

Early Life
Rebecca Burch was born in Charleston, West Virginia.   Since she was a little girl she has always loved art.   Her mother took her to plays, museums, concerts, and other cultural events, which inspired her to enjoy all kinds of art. From then on she knew she wanted to be an artist.   Although her family was a little worried that she would not be able to support herself with only an art degree, they supported her and encouraged her to do what she loves.   She then became more involved with art in high school, where she had an amazing teacher named Mrs. Mary Helen Moynahan.   A few years later, she attended Marshall University, where she studied under Stan Sporny, Peter Massing, Mary Grassell, Earlene Allen, and Michael Cornfeld.   She learned a lot from all of them and has continued her artistic career since her graduation.

Inspiration/Admiration
Rebecca Burch gets a lot of inspiration from other artists, but her biggest inspiration comes from the world itself.   A sun shining on a building in a summer day or the sound of traffic on a busy Saturday afternoon, she enjoys creating works that celebrate life.  Really random things make her start thinking, and sometimes they lead to a big-time project.  She also loves viewing art from other artists.  As a child, she enjoyed visiting exhibits of works by Charles Jupiter Hamiton, a well-known local artist. Charles’s colorful, wild works have had a positive effect on her art.   Although she is a fan of many local artists, she can not pick a favorite, but she will admit that her favorite art is the variety of art she finds in Charleston.  She enjoys attending art exhibits whenever she can, even making quick detours through local galleries during her lunch break.

Current and Future Work
Rebecca Burch is currently working on a few projects.  She is participating in the Stations of the Cross exhibit at Christ Church United Methodist, which she is very excited about.  This is a very unusual exhibit in which different artists take on each of the 14 Stations of the Cross, and the exhibit is displayed at Easter time. She also has a few more exhibits coming up,  a large street installation during FestivALL, and is participating in the East End Banner Project.  She also has a few artistic goals for the future, but since she has young children it has been a challenge to find time to work on her art.   As her children grew older she plans to spend more time in her studio creating more unified body of work, rather than a lot of unrelated pieces created at different times.  

Her present studio, which was a gift from her husband, is a room in her basement.   It is a good size room and a perfect place to get away and to focus on only art.   She also tries to keep a project going in her classroom at Charleston Catholic High school, so her students can watch her progress.

Rebecca Burch is a very talented artist with many accomplishments and many future goals.   She  has inspired many people with her work in the classroom and in her studio.

photo by Rebecca Burch

Charles Jupiter  Hamilton is best known for his wild, colorful carved wood paintings.  His style is often compared to Aboriginal Australian art, although his style is uniquely his own.

Early Life
Charles Jupiter Hamilton is a native of North Carolina, born a son of a Hungarian immigrant.  He grew up on a small dairy farm with his mother, brother, and sisters.  He served as a Gunner’s Mate Petty Officer with the U.S. Navy leading his to extensive travels.   His travels have influenced his twenty years of creating art, traveling from India to Central America, around the United States, winding up in West Virginia.   Along with his travels, he went to UNC-Chapel Hill for several years to receive, as he calls it, an “excellent education.”  His work is appreciated all around the world as the focal point of homes, offices, and museums.  His carvings, hand-built sculptures, canvases, and painted wood have won awards at many juried art exhibits around the world.

Inspiration/Admiration
His arrival in West Virginia occurred by chance.  Without having much success as an artist in Raleigh, North Carolina, a chance to hitchhike his way through the “wildlife” of West Virginia led him to his current location in Charleston, West Virginia.  He moved here with a friend and neighbor in the 1970s, and still lives and works here today.  He works more hours a day than the average person, sometimes as much as sixteen hours.  His everyday experiences and emotions come out in his work tied with the unexpected creatures and elaborate colors and patterns.

Current and Future Work
“Charly,” as his friends and colleagues call him, recently finished part of a collaborative mural at the Charleston Habitat for Humanity ReStore.  His current works are exhibited regularly at the Callen McJunkin Gallery and Taylor Books.  Some of his newer works incorporate new materials, such as corrugated metal and other found items into his paintings.   Hamilton also participated in a collaborative “visual sytem” of letters created by different artists for the 2009 FestivALL logo, and his face was featured in a tribute by artist Jeff Pierson.  Along with his artwork, he participates in teaching young children and adults alike at the Unitarian Universalist Church through the River Arts classes offered there.

Joe Bolyard was born in Raleigh County West Virginia, and would later move to Chicago, Illinois before coming back to West Virginia at the age of six.  Joe Bolyard creates metal repousse’, which are hand-tooled relief works in pressed metal.  He also enjoys painting in acrylics on canvases and mixed-media.  Bolyard is mostly self-taught, with a few classes from Marshall. 

Early Life
Bolyard discovered his love for art when his parents took him to the Art Institute and other art museums on Sundays.  After visiting the museums he began to see everything as art.  His parents encouraged him to be creative, but they sometimes did not understand ways his creativity manifested.  His father made hardwood cabinetry and furniture, and Bolyard was inspired by his father’s projects, but even as a child he preferred painting or sculpting.  Boyard skipped some of the lower-level art classes and went straight into Marshall’s upper level art classes, mostly in sculpting.

Inspirations/Admirations
Bolyard is inspired by a lot of things,  sometimes as mundane as conversations and food to the weather and people.  Bolyard has also found inspiration in his faith and spirituality through the Episcopal church.  He finds his relationship with God to be the most important thing in his life and he shows it through his art.  Some examples would be his “Cruciform” pieces, which are crucifix-like forms, roughly tooled in pewter and created to look like smaller pieces of a larger relic. Bolyard has also created one of the “Stations of the Cross” for this year’s exhibit at Christ Church United Methodist in Downtown Charleston.

Current/Future Work
Currently Bolyard is doing “Cruciforms,” “Relics”, and some new acrylic painting on canvas with strong emphasis on color, juxtaposed by simplified impressionism or just naked, simple forms.  Currently he is exhibiting his art work for sale at Visions on Capital Street, his website, and in his home.

Bolyard’s goal for the future is to be more proficient at producing art and to start promoting his art.  His long term goals are to live as a self sustaining artist, producing works of his choice.

Heidi Richardson Evans is a digital and mixed media artist. Her artwork is often bold and includes things that are either natural or anatomical. Her art could be described as comic book-like and “very personal, literal, and transparent.” It is easily understood without being shallow. Heidi Richardson Evans enjoys making art that has a deep meaning to her but still can be understood and appreciated by all.

Early Life
Heidi Richardson Evans grew up in Charleston, West Virginia. She had a passion for art and loved drawing. Growing up, Heidi was always surrounded by much support and love. She attended West Virginia State University and studied under Paula Clendenin, Molly Erlandson, Sabina Haque, and Reidum Ovrebo. There, Heidi took many more hours of art than she needed for her degree because she could never get enough. She especially treasured the mentoring experience that this created with her teachers.

Inspiration/Admiration
There are many different things and people that inspire Heidi Richardson Evans. “Psychology, myth, anthropology, feminism, various religious expressions… my work is conceptual and draws on those ideas,” says Heidi when asked what inspires her to create the amazing works she does. The ideas of Carl Jung are a great interest to her; she loves the concepts of anatomy and scientific diagrams. Her art often includes the human anatomy in some way. Mainly, Heidi draws her inspiration from “places where the physical meets the mystical.”

Current/Future Work
Currently, Heidi Richardson Evans is working on many different things. She enjoys using Photoshop to create and edit her works. After learning how to manipulate or even create art on the computer, Heidi has decided to try something new this spring and work on meta-art. Meta-art, meaning art that refers to the process of art-making or is self-referential, deals with adding a 3-D dimension to drawings and words. She also likes to work on small sketches everyday, as an exercise. In the future she hopes to publish a book, possibly an autobiography, of words and images that interact with the viewer. “The best example of what I’m talking about visually is the author Nick Bantok. He creates these amazing fantasy books that interact with the viewer- you can open an envelope and read a letter by a character in the novel.” She will be showing again in June at the Buswater show on the East End of Charleston.

Vasilia Scouras is a Charleston-area mixed-media artist, whose vibrant pieces range from drawings to paintings to vivid collages.

Early Life
Vasilia Scouras is a mixed media artist who was born in Boonton, New Jersey.   She became interested in art since she was young, stating, “My family & teachers always encouraged and nurtured my artistic interests and development from a very early age.”  She loves art because it’s relatively cheap and its also the freedom to create & admire something without being told you’re wrong.

Inspiration/Admiration
What inspires Vasilia Scouras?  She tends to be intrigued by supremely simple and mundane things in life. She is attracted to old material things; love letters, keys, vintage magazines, etc. because they have a story to tell.   Knowing who was the past owner and what their life was like sparks her interest and connects her to another time and place.  She is a very tactile person and it clearly shows up in her work.  Having been exposed to a wide variety of cultures throughout her life tends to feed her creatively more than anything.  Vasilia could sit in front of Gustav Klimt or Joan Mitchell’s paintings for hours on end.   She is also highly fascinated by Kurt Schwitters collages, relates to Andre Serain, but her favorite lately is Maria Lassnig.  Her art is influenced by the travels she has gone to and her Greek-American heritage.  She is very precise with symbolism and how one imag4e can represent a multitude of meanings.  When asked if she could go anywhere in the word, where would it be and why; she affirmed to North Africa and India.  “Simply because I haven’t been there yet.  I would like to experience the Muslim side of Africa.  India has always been an interest to me as well; I get excited when I think about all the fabrics and colors.

Current/Future Work
Vasilia Scouras gets her training at West Virginia State University as a senior.  Her current work is exhibited at local restaurants (Lola’s).  She has also participated in Buswater on the Boulevard, which is an independent local show that occurs twice a year in Charleston.  Her work has been juried in Exhibition 280 at the Huntington Museum of Art. Vasilia has just completed a commission for FestivALL Charleston.  For the past few years, she has been focusing on Adinkra symbols, but can’t seem to move past them.  Lately, she has been dealing with OWUO ATWEDEE, which translates to “The Ladder of Death.”  It is meant to be a positive reminder of our mortality and to live a good & positive life, so that your soul may find peace in the afterlife.

Rob Cleland was born and raised in Charleston West Virginia. His earliest art experience that he can recall was drawing a volcano at a friends house. He attributes his love of art to his dad who would pay him two cents for a black and white drawing and five cents for color when he was little. Cleland had no artistic training until college. He spent one year at West Virginia University studying art and then went to the Institute of Pittsburgh and got an Associates Degree in Visual Communications.

photo by Alex Wilson

Rob Cleland is an artist located in Charleston, West Virginia. He does mainly printmaking and painting. His artwork is on display in several local galleries in Charleston. 

Rob Cleland began working as an airbrush artist in a mall as well as doing screen printing for a company called Balzout. He then attended WVSC from 1990-1994 receiving a bachelors degree in communications. Later he went back to school from 2001-2003 to receive a Masters in Printmaking from Marshall University.

Inspirations/Admirations
When it comes to inspiration for his artwork, Cleland believes the moment is his biggest inspiration. “The moment is probably my biggest inspiration. I feel most inspired with challenging work or when a problem comes up and a solution has to be found.” Even so, he still likes to visit the library, other galleries, and Kanawha State Forest for even more inspiration- giving truth to his statement that “inspirations are all over the place.”

Rob Cleland’s favorite work of his own is “Carlita at Kirby” to most onlookers this drawing would seem just a beautiful drawing of a dog playing in the water. However, to Rob Cleland the drawing has more sentimental value. The dog, Carlita, was a family dog that has since passed away and his parents have sold the house where the original photo was taken. Rob Cleland said this work is his favorite because for him it holds a lot of memories.

Rob Cleland also enjoys other artist’s works and a few of his favorites are Robert Villamanga, Stan Sporny, and Henry Koerner. He enjoys Sporny and Koerner’s work especially because they use abstract paint strokes that eventually form a realistic image when viewed from a distance.

Current and Future Works
Recently, Cleland has been working on a letter “R” for this year’s Festival posters. He also will be participating, along with other artists, in United Methodist’s “Stations of the Cross Show.” Cleland’s station is the one where Peter denies Christ three times before the cock crows. Furthermore, he has been scheduled to do an illustration of the capitol building burning for the Midland Trail as well as working on some paintings and assemblages of robots.