Metro Pulse/Artbeat/Arrowmont

What:
ARTrageous Summer Auctions

Where:
Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, 556 Parkway, Gatlinburg

When:
Exhibition through Aug. 8; two auctions on Tuesday, July 1, and Thursday, July 24; both starting at 6:30 p.m. Call 436-5860 for information.

Artwork by Arrowmont's summer faculty

by Heather Joyner

Unless you enjoy poking along amidst minivans with Minnesota plates, heading for Gatlinburg in June is no picnic. But it's worth the trip if you can make it to Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. Following its original incarnation as the Pi Beta Phi Settlement School (established in 1912), Arrowmont opened its doors to summer craft workshop participants in 1945. Almost six decades later, it is an internationally known art center providing year-round classes, exhibitions, and concerts.

This year's "Summer Faculty Invitational" show presents an impressive range of work by guest instructors in ceramics, textiles, mixed media, photography, painting, basketry, and drawing. Displayed alongside metal and wood pieces, items in media mentioned above reflect some pretty astonishing talent. What's more, workshops taught by exhibitors (and relevant dates) are noted next to titles of artists' works, making it a cinch for potential enrollees to choose from course offerings. By the time I left the gallery, I was ready to sell my car and quit my job to have the money and time to stay at Arrowmont indefinitely.

Arrowmont's annual "ARTrageous Summer Auctions" feature contributions from resident, local, and visiting artists, the sale of which helps fund work-study and studio-assistant programs. It's a win-win scenario that raises cash, furthers recognition of the school and individuals' artwork, and enables people to cart home terrific art for affordable prices. Each auction hosts a wine, beer and hors d'oeuvres reception and begins with an hour of silent bidding before live auctioning gets underway. According to Arrowmont public relations coordinator Kimberly Geib, ceramics and items made from wood are especially popular. Bids are generally between $50 and $500. We're not talking teapots or jewelry boxes, either. Rather, objects for sale might include extra-ordinary porcelain vessels and pieces employing marquetry—as well as what could be strictly referred to as fine art.

As for the invitational show, many works deserving praise cannot be addressed in this column. However, some demand attention—for instance, "books" created by Daniel Essig, Tanya Hartman, and Adele Outteridge and "baskets" made by Dorothy Gill-Barnes and Craig Stevens. Native Australian Outteridge perhaps puts it best, citing the Oxford Dictionary's definition that a book can be made from something other than sheets of paper. She says, "This definition gives the book artist considerable scope as to what constitutes a book as far as materials and structure are concerned." Indeed, one of the show's more striking pieces is Outteridge's "Gaia," its transparent perspex pages opened a full 360 degrees and interlaced with black thread, creating a sort of floating shape.

Essig, a mixed media artist from North Carolina, displays five books with dimensions as small as 1.5 inches. Although more conventional than Outteridge's constructions, Essig's objects are what he calls "unwritten diaries" incorporating elements like sharks' teeth and arrowheads in a manner reminiscent of Joseph Cornell. His Coptic and centipede bindings add visual interest to functionality. Unlike Outteridge and Essig, Hartman has pulled the book form apart and mounted sets of pages in paired horizontal frames. A University of Kansas art professor, Hartman produces work that refers to the experiences of relatives. Her diptych titled "Reliquaries #1 - #14" consists of paper torn into different shapes containing text surrounded by a mosaic of single words—somewhat like magnetic poetry scattered on the front of someone's refrigerator. Alluding to her Jewish grandparents' flight from Germany during World War II and subsequent feelings of alienation, Hartman assembles scraps with evocative words. She says, "Just as my family has had to put various cultural traditions together to create a sense of home, so also have I tried to bring the expansive possibilities inherent in oil painting together with less traditional techniques such as stenciling, stitching, and stippling... [M]emory and its translation into words intrigues me, and I enjoy contrasting robust and lush surfaces...that describe the persistent and inescapable throb of sensual and spiritual recollection and regret."

The so-called baskets made by Gill-Barnes and Stevens (both living in Ohio) are not containers in the usual sense. The artists' "Creating A Small Table I II III" is instead a pair of objects—one of which appears to be a core section of wood derived from the other. More fascinating yet is the fact that the numerical marks were made on the willow, which was left to grow, then harvested a few years later. The piece that's apparently an outer section has a singular "I" suggesting a keyhole. Combined, the objects are clever, mysterious, and most unusual.

Vessels by Illinois native Charity Davis-Woodard and North Carolinian Mark Gardner, whether fired or carved, are more in keeping with expected form than pieces described above. But they are exceptionally beautiful. Davis-Woodard's "Dipping Set" and "Jar With Three Perches" are both exquisitely crafted, with intricate components that paradoxically achieve a perplexing overall simplicity. Quite a feat, that. And Gardner's African-art-influenced "Black Vessel" is grace itself. Liz Axford of Houston displays a colorful hand-dyed cotton quilt with refreshingly irregular geometry, and Cynthia Toops of Seattle presents "Phillip's Animal House," a pendant with a cat, a dog, a snake, a bird, and a man's face, painstakingly fashioned from itty bitty polymer fragments.

This show is dazzling, as should be the upcoming auctions...so if anyone wishes to buy an '84 Volvo, you know whom to call.