Craft Alliance Delmar Gallery Shop gives you many ways to show your love!

Featuring a Jewelry Trunkshow with Lisa Colby, a local artist who sculpts

beautiful sterling silver jewelry.

And Susan Freda whose knit jewelry creations have an ethereal quality!

Visit today for all of your gift giving!

Craft Alliance Delmar Gallery Shop

6640 Delmar Blvd *In the Loop*

St. Louis, MO 63130

www.craftalliance.org

(314)725-1177

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Where: Regional Arts Commission

When: Friday, September 16, 5:30 – 7:30pm

The exhibition continues through November 6

You don’t meet many people whose CVs include “textile artist” and “biology Ph.D.”, but C. Alana Tibbets, an artist in the exhibition Textile Variations/ New Directions at The Gallery at the Regional Arts Commission (RAC), has no difficulty combining her two passions.

“I approach a new textile project in the same way I would a question in the lab,” she says, “with a foundation of knowledge and techniques and an open mind.”  Tibbets’ textiles themselves are unique as well.  Her three-dimensional cloth figures have human bodies and the heads of animals or birds, and may reference spirits or animal legends.

Curator Barbara Simon acknowledges that the exhibition “diverges from the conventional and becomes a synthesis of various creative techniques and explorations which results in an expression of personal imagery.”  One could argue that all art is an expression of personal imagery but there’s a fascinating blend of tactile, exotic, yet domestic and familiar elements in textiles.

All of the artists have a unique perspective on textiles.  Textiles embody material culture and the personal histories of their owners, important factors in Dawn Ottensmeier’s work.  Erin Dimick’s interests lie in the relationship between cloth and women’s lives.   As seen in Jo Stealey’s sculptural vessels assembled from handmade paper and leaves, textiles are a fusion of traditional and innovative techniques.  Rena Wood looks to Asian landscape painting and Color Field paintings of the 1940s and 1950s to create her work.  World cinema and the history of American art have greatly influenced Sun Smith-Foret’s pieces.  Marjorie Hoeltzel draws inspiration from nature, literature, and her own dreams.  The main themes of Nicole Ottwell’s work focus on handmade vs. machine-made and traditional vs. modern construction.  Laura Strand has channeled her sadness at losing her sister-in-law into her current body of work.

Textile Variations/ New Directions opens at RAC on Friday, September 16 from 5:30 – 7:30pm and is free and open to the public.  It continues through November 6 and is part of the St. Louis biennial collaboration event Innovations in Textiles 9.  The concept was introduced in 1995 with three participating galleries and now involves 19 venues that exhibit contemporary fiber/textile art.  Programs such as these continue to increase exposure and appreciation for textiles as an art form.

Innovations in Textiles 9 will hold two bus tours which visit all of the participating venues.  For more information and to buy tickets for one or both tours, please visit http://innovationsintextiles.com.

Curator: Sarah Colby

Gallery Opening: Friday, August 5 from 5:30 – 7:30pm

Gallery Talk: Thursday, August 18 from 5:30 – 7:00pm

Exhibit continues through September 4

Beginning in 2009, every year Critical Mass awards four artists a stipend of $1,000 each to assist them in creating work and expanding their horizons in these tough economic times.  In 2010, artists Emily Hemeyer, Sarah Paulsen, Alex Petrowsky and Lyndsey Scott received the award as creative operating capital in recognition for their outstanding work.  This exhibition features their painting, performance art, documentary film and animation techniques, and concepts of green lifestyles for the future.

Gallery hours: Monday – Friday, 9:00am – 5:00pm
Saturday and Sunday, noon – 5:00pm

Gallery location: The Regional Arts Commission
6128 Delmar Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63112

Free parking in the lot behind The Pageant; metered street parking

What do the following things have in common: a dollar bill, sketchbooks, a PVC and aluminum sheet, and three 24” x 48” canvases?  They’re all part of a series of four workshops, conceived by artists Cbabi Bayoc, Phil Jarvis and William Lobdell, which resulted in the creation of the 11 works in this exhibition.

In one workshop, Bayoc, Jarvis and Lobdell used an image of a dollar bill as a jumping-off point to create individual paintings inspired by the image.  In another, the artists traded sketches and created paintings based on those sketches.  In the third, the artists divided a photo into three sections and each artist reproduced his section of the photo in paint on a 24” x 48” canvas.  They then placed the canvases together to form one painting.  In the fourth workshop, after creating a collaborative sketch, the artists enlarged and reproduced it onto a PVC and aluminum sheet, and painted the final image onto this sheet.

Collaboration is an important challenge for these artists whose primary work is done independently and who have such different styles.  Equipped with his BA from Grambling State University in Grambling, Louisiana, Cbabi Bayoc began his career as a caricature artist at a Six Flags amusement park.  After he mastered the style, his illustrations appeared in Rap Pages magazine and he was invited to create caricatures for album covers and music videos.  His client list includes Coca Cola, Anheuser-Busch, SIDS Resource, singers and producers Prince and Erykah Badu, New Line Cinema, and St. Louis Children’s Hospital.

Like Bayoc, Phil Jarvis worked as a summer portraitist at Six Flags during high school.  He graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with his BFA in painting and went on to create hundreds of still lifes, landscapes, and portraits.  Jarvis’ varied career includes 23 years as a professional sign-maker, exhibitions at Mad Art Gallery and Art Coop, Best of Show awards at the St. Louis Artists’ Guild and the Women’s Caucus for the Arts among others, and commissions for full-room murals in several homes throughout the St. Louis area.

William Lobdell holds degrees from the Kansas City Art Institute and Webster University.  The scale of his works ranges from intimate to massive and though he is interested in many artistic media, drawing, painting, and sculpture are the most satisfying to him as an artist.  Lobdell has shown his award-winning work in nationally juried exhibitions and companies such as H & R Block in Kansas City, An American Place restaurant in St. Louis, and the Southern Methodist Heart Research Center in Paducah, Kentucky have collected and displayed his work.  Lobdell is active in his local art scene as a member of nonprofit artist groups where he frequently speaks and leads classes.  He also mentors artists in his community.

Though collaboration is difficult for these artists in terms of yielding to others’ visions, it also provides many opportunities for growth.