Beauty in Transmutation

For Jane Smithers, change is as welcome as the tumbling seasons.

Reduction: carefully cooking down a wine or sauce until most of the liquid evaporates. What remains is concentrated yum. So it is with art and abstraction. For years, Jane Smithers has focused on artistic reduction. She condenses subjects like trees, flowers, mountains, and sky into free-form strokes, smears, ribbons, bands of color, and marks, bold and fragile. When abstract art is done well, details that define a subject are dismissed. What remains are shapes, forms, colors and textures. The energy of the object/feeling that originally inspired the painting endures, often intensifies. Jane is a master of this magical process. Travel back to 2003 and take 2-3 minutes to study her cover. Move your eyes around all the compass points. What do you think inspired the painting? Was it Nature? A meadow/mountain vista? A marvelous field of poppies? Dancers in brilliant crimson costumes? Something else entirely? Take five slow, deep breaths as you lose yourself in the image. On your fifth breath were you feeling the movement in the forms? Where did your eyes take you? What is the feeling attached to your interpretation of this work? Imagine a palette knife in your hand. Loosen your arm. Swirl it in the air. Imitate the motions/technique you think Jane used to apply paint to surface. What words would describe the knife’s movement? Bold, timid, loose, tight? Based upon your reaction to the painting, how would you title it? Remember, when diving into abstraction, there are no wrong answers.

Jane Smithers

Now that you’ve participated in a mini-critique, read what Jane has to say about her journey of Change. “From large format oil paintings to an expanded repertoire of works on paper, my art adventure continues to grow at an ever-accelerated pace! “New York City and the Metropolitan Museum of Art! In 2013, I made a decision for “Change,” not only a change in residence but a change that greatly affected my art. As I have always believed that change is an essential part of life, to be welcomed with an open heart … this time it afforded me space and opportunities to learn and grow beyond my wildest dreams.

Scan to read the continuing article about Jane Smithers. by Donna Rhodes

Currents of Life’s River

There’s a touch of the Divine and a dash of Miracle embedded within Michele Page Webster’s beguiling works.

Michele Page Webster’s artistic journey covers a vast expanse, both internal and external. She’s walked among the wild ones; explored maternal Cherokee roots; sifted, mixed, and painted with Holy Soil from El Santuario de Chimayo; delved deeply into Design (interior, landscape, event-planning); and, in the spirit of Wisdom, surrendered to the currents of Life’s River and its unpredictable flow. It’s in the latter that movement, change, and growth immediately rose to the river’s surface as Michele spoke about releasing her old reliable representational artistic style, replacing it with a loose, expressionistic, abstract freedom. Earlier this year her daughter was in a serious car accident. Recovery is slow – a thing that can’t be controlled. All one can do is slow down and take a day at a time. That approach spilled over into Michele’s painting. Representational painting is detailed and time-consuming. Abstract expressionism is spontaneous. You loosen your limbs and let your soul and heart flow through your body and out your arm, hand, and brush. The splashes, broad strokes, dots, and dashes express feelings in ways meticulous detail cannot. The results are stirring and often contagious. While the artist might be expressing edginess, the viewer might see contentment. If you look at Michele’s work on pagetheartist.com, you can track her abstraction evolution. Explore the spirited horses springing up from clouds of energy as though Mother Earth is giving them birth. Compare the realism of the horses to the softer, more impressionistic look of the pale tree trunks, “Aspen Splendor” set against a band of warm red background and a hovering tree-top turquoise complement. Move one huge step closer to abstract with “In the Beginning”, a dynamic take on the formation of the earth and firmament – or perhaps something else entirely. That’s the joy of non-representational work. It will take you where you need to go whether you are the artist or the viewer.

Michele laughs and says, “My Maltese puppy, Lola, just turned 13. I started painting when she was a puppy. She’s carried me from representational to abstract. She’s quite the Muse.” You never know where your spirit guide might be and where your river might take you. Michele says, “All you can do is breathe and go with the flow.” Contact Michele at michelepagew@gmail.com. See her work on Facebook and Instagram or call her at (850) 322-7660.

by Donna Rhodes

Lasting Impressions The glories of the Land of the Rising Sun are unveiled at The Bascom.

The Bascom’s exploration of the idea of “Place” this year continues with a special exhibition that brings the beauty and richness of a faraway place to the Plateau through the visual arts. In September, 60 of the finest Japanese prints in the Read-Simms Collection at Charleston’s Gibbes Museum of Art will be on display at The Bascom in the Bunzl Gallery. This exhibit of exceptional and rare prints entitled Lasting Impressions will provide Western North Carolina residents and visitors an opportunity to view one of the nation’s most significant collections of Japanese woodblock prints. Amassed by Motte Alston Read of Charleston and his sister Mary Read Hume Simms of New Orleans during the first two decades of the 20th century – a period dubbed the “Golden Age” of Japanese print collecting in America – the collection is one of the earliest of its kind in the Southeast and offers the full range of popular print subjects created by master ukiyo-e artists of the Edo Period in Japan. Programing for the exhibition includes a curator talk with Sara Arnold, The Gibbes Museum Director of Curatorial Affairs, set for 11:00 A.M. Saturday, Sept 17. This event is free and open to the public. As the Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Gibbes Museum of Art, Ms. Arnold oversees special exhibitions and is responsible for the study, care, and interpretation of the museum’s permanent art collection. She has curated over 35 special exhibitions and served as a contributing author or editor to numerous exhibition catalogues including Lasting Impressions: Japanese Prints from the Read-Simms Collection (2021). This striking, fully illustrated catalogue from the Gibbes Museum of Art features entries by Japanese fine art specialist Sebastian Izzard and an in-depth essay on the collectors by Sara C. Arnold and Stephen G. Hoffius. Catalogues will be available in The Bascom Shop for purchase. The exhibition will be on display at The Bascom from September 10 through December 3. A public reception will be held on Thursday, September 15, from 5:00 – 6:30 P.M.

by Billy Love, The Bascom

DINING

Pages 114-127

photo by Susan Renfro