Friday, April 5, the Harrison Center and Plat Collective present Radiance, an artist reception featuring new work by Beth Guipe Hall in the Harrison Gallery. Hall, best known for her encaustic collage work, says the show is comprised of encaustic, fiber works that utilize embroidery stitches, rug hooking, plastic canvas, and weaving techniques; wall lamps incorporating encaustic elements with sewn paper collage; and watercolor paintings with gold and silver leaf.
The encaustic pieces are a departure from previous work which was photo-based. Hall explains that when an opportunity arose to show 100 pieces at the Affordable Art Fair in New York she began to simplify her process, creating more graphic designs that read like mandalas or simplified maps. The fiber and watercolor work was inspired by crafts she learned as a child. Learning string art, macrame, and other crafts from relatives and even bluebirds/camp fire girl leaders instilled a belief in the value of things that are hand made and well crafted.
City Gallery features Presence, new work by Forrest Formsma. He says, “I endeavor to interweave subject and poetry of materials and techniques.” Formsma, who completed his BA and MA at Miami University of Ohio and taught art at the high school level before becoming a full time artist. He is a member of the American Impressionist Society, Oil Painters of America, Hoosier Salon, and Indiana Plein Air Painters Association.
Stuart Snoddy brings his show, singsong, to Speck Gallery. Snoddy, who was recently featured in New American Paintings, says, “Lately I’ve been enjoying making fluid little lines that ultimately end up describing some sort of weird form.”
In Hank & Dolly’s Gallery is photographer Caleb Click’s Ten Years. “As my time in the place I have begrudgingly called home for a decade comes to an end, I have embarked on this project in an attempt to arrive at a sense of closure about the years I spent here. Through the emotionally taxing exercise of revisiting scenes monumentalized by my personal history, this work has become an agent for both self-acceptance and self-ridicule. I am torn between how I want to feel and how I do feel about my relationships to the people, places and ideas represented in these images. Photographing the subject matter in a blurred, out of focus technique suggests this emotional discord. Through my journey, I have come closer to knowing who I am and have come to embrace the struggle in trying to take an honest look at myself.”
In the Gallery Annex, the midcentury-inspired art of Sandi Hauanio and mixed media work by Shane Rodems.
Enchantment: Fairies and Tales, illustrated work by Merle Pace and Lorie Lee Andrews continues in the Underground Gallery.
Naptown Stomp returns to the gym with live music and swing dancing.
The work hangs through April 26.
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