Pivot Points: Six Painters Six Poets January 23 – March 25, 2006 |
The Fine Art Museum at the Fine & Performing Arts Center, Western Carolina University, is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition titled Pivot Points which continues through March 26. Thursday, March 23, 4 p.m. a gallery talk by exhibition painter Reni Gower and poetry reading by exhibition poet Joshua Poteat will take place at the Fine Art Museum. The exhibition, gallery talk and poetry reading are free and open to the public. Pivot Points is a traveling exhibition organized by two faculty members in Virginia Commonwealth University Painting and Printmaking departments. The exhibition brings together three generations of artists and poets examining the ties of mentorship between teacher and student. The second generation acts as the “pivot points” connecting the generations together. The exhibit brings together six painters: Victor Kord and Richard Lazzaro, who mentored Sally Bowring and Reni Gower; Valerie Bogdan and Beth Weisgerber, who were mentored by Bowring and Gower. All are painters working in abstraction whose vibrant works create a visual language exploring diverse personal expressions such as: life, language, landscape, beauty, nature, decorative arts, and religion. “Pivot Points” brings together six poets: Larry Levis and Dave Smith, who mentored Gregory Donovan and Elizabeth Seydel Morgan; and Joshua Poteat and Laura-Gray Street who were mentored by Donovan and Morgan. Each poet brings a unique voice to the exhibition yet all share a familial use of structure and visionary imagery. Each work displayed is a unique and intimate expression of the artists and writers and also seen as a complete community; in which, multigenerational family patterns and similarities in languages appear. Pivot Points tells a familiar and unique story of the continual community of teachers and students and celebrates the connections between two creative disciplines, visual art and poetry. |