The Barton Art Galleries is pleased to announce the opening of the “Visible Ghost” exhibition on Monday, Aug. 20. A public reception will be held on Friday, Sept. 7, from 6 -8 p.m., with a gallery talk at 7 p.m., in Case Art Building on the campus of Barton College in Wilson. The exhibition will run through September 23. This event is open to the public free of charge, and the community is invited to attend. “Visible Ghost” is an invitational group exhibition featuring works by: Jonathan Bowling, Allen Lee, Leslie Pruneau, Barbara Hardy Ray, Dylan Ray, Bob Ray, and Roy Revels.

The experimental work exhibited in “Visible Ghost” displays the essences of past cultures with a striving to explore the boundaries of modern culture. Viewers will find repurposed materials of forged steel, wood, graphite, found materials, and collaged materials reassembled for public spaces. Best explained by Leslie Pruneau, “It is not my concern to paint ‘nice’ pictures, but a portrayal of the societies in which we live. The connected imagery of advertising, social media, computers, and televisions is at once gratifying and uncensored, and my pursuit is to portray their ever-changing contexts.”

Sculptor Jonathan Bowling of Greenville grew up on a small farm in Kentucky, where the Appalachian Mountains melt into the rolling hills of the Bluegrass. As a teenager in the late eighties, Bowling lived in Belgium, where he had access to the museums of Western Europe. On his return to the states, he attended the University of Kentucky where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History. In 1996, he moved to Greenville, North Carolina, to pursue a Master in Fine Arts degree in Sculpture at East Carolina University. “Recently, I have been working on a series of steel horses, which focus on interior and negative space as much as on the contours and surface,” Bowling said. “I envision each ‘horse’ as a series of abstract sculptures, which combine to form the armature for the whole.”

Experimental multi-disciplinary artist Allen Lee, from Columbia, will exhibit a series of small-scaled drawings combined with collaged materials, as well as several captivating cigar box guitars. “I fill notepads regularly with random drawings that I’m doing throughout the day,” said Lee. “These pads pile up and make good raw material for a variety of projects. This is the first time I’ve intentionally combined drawing and collage. Up until now, my collages have had a more formal compositional structure. I’ve found that including the scribble drawings loosens things up and shortens the conversation that I’m always having with the materials.” Lee currently serves as Technology Director for Tyrrell County Schools.

Leslie Pruneau is an award-winning artist who grew up in Raleigh and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from East Carolina University. An international traveler since childhood, she has been exposed to many different art influences. Her pieces are now found in several private collections in both the U.S. and Europe, and her work has been shown in many exhibitions. Pruneau explained, “In the past several years, my work has become more and more abstract and conceptual in style. Each piece grows independently through experimental applications and nontraditional processes. The language for my work is best translated through the accumulations of experimental mark-making that continually challenge what is expected of a work of art.”

Barbara Hardy Ray is a painter, sculptor, mail artist, and silversmith. Her new works are reliquaries of the castoff things in a life. She is drawn to the Japanese sensibility of Hari – Kuyo ( shrine to broken sewing needles), the beauty of the broken and unusable. Barbara Hardy Ray’s new paintings are small, focused studies of color fields intersected by the line from the hand.

Dylan Baker Ray has been capturing moments professionally for almost a decade. Born in Missouri, Ray was raised in Eastern North Carolina near the swamps of the Tar River and Pamlico Sound, and he spent much of his youth along the Outer Banks. In his time as staff photographer for the News-Times, he has won 11 N.C. Press awards and was recently named a grand-prize recipient at the 7th Photo Biennial at East Carolina University. His recent exhibits include the N.C. Aquarium at Pine Knoll Shores and the Core Sound Waterfowl Museum on Harkers Island. Much of his inspiration comes from William Eggleston, Stanley Kubrick, and his father, Bob Ray, who is an artist residing on Ocracoke Island. Ray said his philosophy behind his work is “the idea of found rather than forced images.”

Multimedia artist Bob Ray’s enigmatic artist statement supports the notion of “Visible Ghost. “It was not made of words so I ate what I could grasp,” Ray stated. “What is made poorly, what is made well — an Ozark hog pen, a thoroughbred stable in Kentucky — what runs between these constructions? How does one arrive at these points? The poetic image, mysteries of a nocturnal fable, random juxtapositions of the man-made and the natural, which eventually leak into each other; this is the composition of my visual interest at the moment.” Completing his statement, Ray added, “It wasn’t what I thought it was, and isn’t what I think it is.”

Roy E. Revels, a painter and sculptor living on Ocracoke Island, has displayed work across the region, including the Emerge Gallery in Greenville, A Place for Contemporary Art in Asheville, and Rocky Mount’s Imperial Center for Arts and Sciences. Revels collaborates often with fellow Ocracoke Island artists, such as Bob Ray, supporting the notion that trash can be turned to treasure. Recycled and repurposed materials combine on the surface with paint to create lavish melodies of blue, green and yellow.

The exhibition runs through September 23. The Barton Art Galleries are open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Art Galleries will be open on Sunday, August 26; Saturday, September 22; and Sunday, September 23 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. For additional information, please contact Bonnie LoSchiavo at 252-399-6477 or email: artgalleries@barton.edu.

Now on view in the Barton Art Galleries are works by the faculty of the Department of Art and Design at Barton College. The month-long show features the artwork of professors who not only teach but also actively pursue and exhibit their own art, nationally and internationally. The show includes the works of Ben Bridgers, Susan Fecho, Mark Gordon, Gerard Lange, and Maureen O’Neill, as well as artist-in-residence and professor emeritus J. Chris Wilson. This group exhibition highlights the diversity of the art faculty and showcases paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, and photographs. A gallery reception will be held on Friday, Oct. 26 from 5-7 p.m. The fall exhibition will run through Friday, Nov. 2.

A series of gallery talks also will be presented throughout the month, featuring individual art faculty. The schedule includes Ben Bridgers from 12:30-1 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 15; Mark Gordon from 11-11:30 a.m. on Friday, Oct. 19; Gerard Lange at 12:30-1 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 23; Maureen O’Neal from 12:30-1 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 24; and Susan Fecho from 4:30 – 5 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 29.

Ben Bridgers’ oils on canvas, such as “Amo” and “San Lorenzo,” explore “a curiosity with the magic, mystery, and perversity of nature,” as Bridgers explains. “Often the imagery is inexplicable, where the juxtaposition or placement of an object or idea is believable to a certain point. I strive to create a space that is intangible.” Receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting from Barton College, Bridgers earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Drawing from the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art. He has held academic appointments at universities throughout the United States and Italy. Bridgers joined the faculty at Barton College this fall as an associate professor of art. His work has been exhibited in various galleries and museums at the national and international level and is held in both public and private collections in the United States, Italy, and Japan.

Susan Fecho is a printmaker/surface designer with a Master of Fine Arts degree from East Carolina University. Her works have been shown both nationally and internationally as well as in a variety of publications. Fecho is exhibiting images from her new series “Along the Crooked Road.” Ranging from graphite, encaustic to textiles, figurative and architecture, vernacular imagery “seeks to interpret the past as a personal, cultural and archetypal artifact,” Fecho explains. “While developing the concept for artwork based on the centuries-old historic architectural imagery located along the winding roads of the Tidewater region to the Appalachians, I began to study the area’s entire aesthetic experience.” Fecho is a professor of art and chair of the Department of Art and Design at Barton College and makes her home in historic Tarboro.

Mark Gordon, an associate professor of art at Barton College, is showcasing ceramics and sculpture. Gordon shares, “The physicality of clay, along with its remarkable ability to freeze action and respond to physical impact or retain any fleeting impression, immediately and permanently captured my interest. Clay is a universal medium; potters’ vessels have formed an essential part of material culture.” Describing one of his works in the exhibition, he further explains, “The jagged and uneven surfaces of ‘Pyramid Triangle’ were developed to evoke the effects of geological erosion.” The piece is a series of diminutive modular clay pyramids assembled and brushed with a series of glazes. Gordon received his Master of Fine Arts degree in Studio Art from Ohio State University, and he has worked with clay for nearly 40 years. He has held numerous art residencies across the nation as well as in Caracas, Cairo, Madrid, Jerusalem, and La Romana (Dominican Republic).

Gerard Lange, exhibiting mixed media and found object assemblages such as “Shadows of Discourse,” is trained in the areas of sculpture, drawing, and photography. Lange worked as a professional photographer before acquiring his Master of Fine Arts degree from Tulane University, From there, Lange began his teaching career at Northern Michigan University and later joined the faculty of Barton College. He works in whatever media he sees fit for a particular project, including traditional fine art materials and photography, sometimes coupled with digital imagery and sculpture. “Photography is largely a medium responsive to observation more than conceptualization,” Lange explains. “Sure, one might imbue a particular image with forethought, planning and insight, but the execution of the image is done solely by the acts of looking and responding to that which is observed.” His works have been shown both nationally and internationally as well as in a variety of publications and journals.

Maureen O’Neill, a native of Massachusetts, finds her artistic niche in painting and drawing. O’Neill is exhibiting pastels and oil on canvas in this exhibition. She earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, and, in 2006, she moved to Tarboro. She continues to teach part time at Barton, Wesleyan, and Edgecombe County Colleges. She is currently spearheading a fundraising campaign to raise money for children’s arts programs in Edgecombe County. Maintaining a studio in Tarboro, O’Neill shares, “My work relies on my remaining awake to ‘everyday moments of seeing’ that leave an impression for me to retrieve later in the studio. In the process of making work, I ask myself, ‘Is it true, or not?’ always reworking images, layer upon layer, until it, the thing that lingers within my visual memory, once again emerges, holds, and settles onto the paper or canvas.”

Professor Emeritus J. Chris Wilson has served on the Barton College faculty for 38 years and now continues as the College’s first artist-in-residence. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Georgia, where he also completed post-graduate work, with Lamar Dodd as his major professor. Exhibiting oils on canvas in this show, Wilson is a post-abstract realist who has paintings in hundreds of collections in the United States, England, Japan, and Saudia Arabia. He is currently working on a 100-painting series, “From Murphy to Manteo—An Artist’s Scenic Journey,” of which a number of works are on view at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh. Wilson shares, “Although I began a journey seeking only to represent North Carolina scenic landscapes, I have, in fact, found something of myself reflected in these scenes, and I sincerely hope that viewers might find something of themselves reflected there also.”

For additional information about this exhibition, please contact Bonnie LoSchiavo, in the Barton Art Galleries, at 252-399-6477 or email: artgalleries@barton.edu.

Friends of Visual Arts Fall Lecture and Dinner
(Invitation Only)
Featured Speakers: Stephen J. Gerberich and Fred Burton
6 p.m. – Reception and Lecture, Barton Art Galleries
7 p.m. – Dinner, Lauren Kennedy and Alan Campbell Theatre

Sponsored by the Barton College Friends of Visual Arts

For more information, contact Frances Belcher, Office of Institutional Advancement, at 252-399-6357 or email fbelcher@barton.edu.

Prepare to be amazed at the artistic works on view in the Barton Art Galleries newest exhibition titled “Slow-Motion Visions” by acclaimed artists Steve J. Gerberich and Fred Burton. The opening reception for the exhibition is scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 11, from 4-6 p.m. Also, on Monday, Nov. 12, there will be a public lecture about the exhibition at 10 a.m. in the Barton Art Galleries. These events are open to the public free of charge, and the community is invited to attend. Gerberich’s and Burton’s “Slow-Motion Visions” will be on display from November
1 – December
12.

Immediately following the opening reception, Gerberich and Burton will be the featured speakers for a Barton College Friends of Visual Arts Dinner and Lecture on Sunday evening, Nov. 11. The dinner and lecture is by invitation only for members of the College’s Friends of Visual Arts. For membership details, please contact Frances Belcher at 252-399-6357 or email fbelcher@barton.edu.

A self-proclaimed lover of hand tools or any useful invention without a power cord, Gerberich turns discarded labor-saving devices into a wealth of fantastical sculptures. Push a button or spin a crank, and these marvels come alive: buzzing, whirring, squeaking, humming, clanking, chugging, flashing, and blinking. From the Kettle Head Choir to the Springs, Sprockets & Pulleys collection, this is analog work for the digital age.

In the mid 1980s, with a University of Northern Iowa photography degree in his pocket, Gerberich moved to New York. The vivid images he had been refining quickly morphed into window installations. Items that had previously been happy to live within his viewfinder now enjoyed more expanded environs, like SoHo storefronts. Some of the sculptor’s myriad influences are Cornell, Rauschenberg, Duchamp, Tinguely, Kienholz, and his late brother, Tim. He’s also perpetually exhilarated by music.

His famed Brooklyn studio – a Williamsburg laboratory of thingamabobs whose compatibility is always being tested – holds a vast and odd collection of recycled resources. From moose heads to hand beaters, he finds magical uses for all. And, his processes aren’t secret. He leaves an open invitation for friends to join him in his experiments. Come on in and get Gerbo-ized. There’s always work in progress.

Burton’s displayed art is considered correspondence art or “mail art.”  All 1,000 Burton pieces in the exhibition were sent to Gerberich over the years.

Burton is a professor at the Memphis College of Art where he has taught since 1987. His paintings, drawings and woodcuts have been exhibited in Paris, Vence, London, New York City, Chicago, Houston, Kansas City, Lincoln and Orlando. Burton has held residencies at the Edward Albee Foundation, Montauk, Long Island; the Michael Karolyi Foundation, Vence, France; Altos de Chavon in the Dominican Republic; the Tyron Guthrie Center in County Monaghan, Ireland; the Millay Colony for the Arts, Steepletop, Austerliz, New York; the Ragdale Foundation, Lake Forest, Illinois; the Woodstock School of Art in Woodstock, New York; and the Morris Graves Foundation, Loleta, California. He has written art criticism for “Art Papers,” “The Commercial Appeal,” and “Number.”

For additional information about the events or the exhibition, please contact Bonnie LoSchiavo in the Barton Art Galleries at 252-399-6477 or email artgalleries@barton.edu.

Friends of Visual Arts Spring Lecture and Dinner
(Invitation Only)
March 17
6 p.m. – Reception and Lecture, Barton Art Galleries
7 p.m. – Dinner, Lauren Kennedy and Alan Campbell Theatre

Sponsored by the Barton College Friends of Visual Arts

For more information, contact Frances Belcher, Office of Institutional Advancement, at 252-399-6357 or email fbelcher@barton.edu.