Vicki Rees / AJ Fletcher Foundation

Natural Pacing

March - May, 2016
Vicki Rees is a Raleigh artist who specializes in contemporary realism executed in colorful oils. She draws inspiration from her appreciation of the beauty found in the everyday.  Unusual angles, dramatic lighting, and nature's intricacies all capture her attention. Vicki's work has been exhibited throughout North Carolina and is in collections in the South and Midwest. Originally from Indianapolis, she moved to North Carolina after a 20+ year stop in Kentucky. Her home studio located in downtown Raleigh is open by appointment.

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AJ Fletcher Foundation is located at 909 Glenwood Avenue, Raleigh, NC 27605. The Community Exchange Exhibitions help to enliven the offices of start-up nonprofit organizations that work inside the AJ Fletcher's building.

TACTILE

A multi-sensory and accessible exhibition in VAE's Main Gallery
May 6-26
First Friday Reception: May 6, 6-10pm
Main Gallery

For the month of May VAE will exhibit 22 pieces of work that can be experienced with more than just sight alone. These multi-sensory pieces were created by 17 artists from 7 states across the US. This exhibition invites visitors to go beyond looking at artwork and encourages them to use their senses of touch, smell, hearing, and even taste to experience each piece.

While this exhibition will, of course, give existing art patrons a new way to enjoy and appreciate art, one of the main goals of TACTILE is to further VAE's focus on including people with disabilities in the arts community. VAE is providing large-format print materials, Braille transcribed materials, Audio Described and ASL interpreted tours, field trip opportunities for school-age kids, and additional staff assistance for visitors during the exhibit. Contact Brandon (919.828.7824 ext 6) if you would like to request any specific accommodations.

COME TAKE A TOUR ON SATURDAY, MAY 21!
11am - Open Exhibition Tour
1pm - Audio Described Tour
3pm - ASL Interpreted Tour
RSVP for a tour: email brandon@visualartexchange.org or call 919.828.7834 est 6

Can’t make those time? Still want to experience a tour of the exhibit?? That’s AWESOME! Want to request an accommodation for that tour? We are happy to accommodate! Contact Brandon: brandon@visualartexchange.org or 919.828.7834 ext6 to start a conversation!

In addition VAE is hosting two workshops in conjunction with TACTILE:
Double Duty - a creative writing workshop utilizing all of your senses!
CREATING SPACE - a workshop around accessible and multi-sensory exhibitions!

The Artists
Phil Ashe, Sequential Destination
Phil Ashe, Fuzzy Logic
Peg Bachenheimer, Washing Ashore
Whitney Bandel, In Your Hands
Jeannette Brossart, Undulating
Renee Cloud, Artifacts
Pamela Crockett, Memory Melt
Kate Dameron, Breathe, 2..3..4
Kate Dameron, Germinate
Susan Finer, Roundabout
Em Jensen, Three Hours (Third Hour)
Larry Lean, Wolf Trap
Larry Lean, In Advance of a Bald Headed Tire
Eddie Lohmeyer, Joust Assemblage #612 (In Black)
Carey Netherton, Manganese Violet
Jenna Richards, Large Openwork
Daphne Rodgers, Disintegration II
Kelly Sheppard Murray, Mile After Mile
Devyn Vasquez, Let's just be honest
Devyn Vasquez, Acrylic Meditations
Kathrine Worel, In It That Is More Than Itself (objet petit "ah")
Kathrine Worel, This Much

View all of the work exhibited in TACTILE!

The Juror
Tom Pursey, Co-founder of Flying Objects, a London-based creative agency that won an IK Prize in 2015 for their multi-sensory exhibition Tate Sensorium at Tate Britain.

about Tom
Prior to founding Flying Objects, Tom worked for Google in Europe, and lead Chrome and Brand marketing for Google in Asia. He holds a degree in English Literature from the University of Oxford. He's interested in interactive projects, the role of digital in the arts, and what happens when things come together in unlikely ways.

about Tate Sensorium
Can taste, touch, smell and sound change the way we ‘see’ art?

Tate Sensorium is an immersive display featuring paintings from the Tate collection. You can experience sounds, smells, tastes and physical forms inspired by the artworks, and record and review your physiological responses through sophisticated measurement devices.

The experience encourages a new approach to interpreting artworks, using technology to stimulate the senses, triggering both memory and imagination. On leaving, you will be invited to explore the rest of the gallery using the theme of the senses as a guide.

Tate Sensorium is the winning project of IK Prize 2015, awarded annually for an idea that uses innovative technology to enable the public to discover, explore and enjoy British art from the Tate collection in new ways.

The Guardian's writer Nicola Davis was highly impressed!

Accessibility
While VAE’s gallery space is fully accessible and we strive to make the exhibition submission process accessible to artists as well. We encourage anyone to enter our open call exhibitions. If you need any additional information or accommodations in order to enter a call-for-art please email or call (919.828.7834 ext 6) Brandon for assistance.

Visual Art Exchange strives to be accessible to all visitors! If you have an accommodation you would like to request for an upcoming program or exhibition, have a suggestion about our accessibility, or if you have an accessibility question please contact us at (919) 828-7834 ext 6 or by emailing Brandon.

• VAE is a single story facility and all galleries and facilities are accessible.
• All printed documents can be made available in Braille or large print.
• We are happy to provide audio tours and/or ASL interpretation for our exhibition and/or special events. A two-week advance request is requested, if possible.

VAE would like to invite members of the disability community to work with our staff and board to increase our accessibility and inclusion of artists and patrons with disabilities. If you have suggestions, criticisms or would like to be involved in increasing VAE’s accessibility email Brandon or call (919) 828-7834 ext 6.

If you would like to become a member of VAE but the membership fee is a financial barrier please contact Brandon (919.828.7834 ext 6) today to start a conversation!

VAE is part of a Learning Community of eleven arts organizations that collaborate to advocate for and improve access to the arts for people with disabilities. This collective is funded in part by the City of Raleigh Arts Commission and the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County.

This exhibition is funded in part by the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation

Questions? Email Brandon!

Eunjung Park: Prism of Choice

April 20 - June 4, 2016
First Friday Receptions: May 6 & June 3, 6-10pm

Many people set up displays in their homes for visitors and passersby to see—figurines, photographs, and other knickknacks arranged on shelves and tables. Such displays seem governed by each arranger’s own individual sense of ‘rightness,’ her sense that things look best when arrayed in a specific way.  In studying these, I have come to regard shelves and tables as symbols for the spaces in which people draw out that sense of ‘rightness’ through the selection and display of objects.

My recent work explores the relationship between supportive structures—like shelves and tables, but also clothing racks and the rhyme schemes of poems—and the items they display.  I am interested in the moments when this relationship becomes complex or ambiguous, when a supportive structure itself is displayed or displayed items play a more structural role.  I am also interested in the ways that structures built of different materials—especially everyday materials—enable diverse forms of display and arrangement that correspond to equally diverse aesthetic sensibilities.   I wish to understand the symbolic potential held by these different forms of arrangement, and how they might be meaningfully employed.

Sara Trepanier / Duke Health Raleigh Hospital

April - June 2016
3400 Wake Forest Road, Raleigh, NC 27609

Biography
Sara Boland Trepanier is a native of Charleston, WV. Sara was exposed to painting by her artist-mother during her early years. After serving in the Navy, she moved to Raleigh twelve years ago and has been working at Duke Raleigh Hospital for the past five years. After practicing medicine for 20 years, Sara took a workshop with John Poon here at Raleigh. As an artist, she is now enjoying color development while working on landscapes. Sara finds great fulfillment as she balances her day to day work as a staff physician with her artistry, which reflects her love of the sea and wilderness.

Artist Statement
Growing up with a surgeon for a father and my mother who is an artist, I always appreciated the complimentary nature of art and medicine. I loved Frank Netter and find his anatomy books as works of art. I feel studying medicine helps one to appreciate symmetry and beauty in the human figure and causes me to look for balance. It has also been shown that providing art classes to medical students helps build empathy. I find that medicine and art continue to inspire me and appeal to both the creative and logical sides of my brain. I also feel inspired by adventure. My paintings are expressions of the beauty of nature found in landscapes. I love the sea, and my time in the Navy made me appreciate the unpredictability and excitement of the ocean. Sailing brings me closer to that sense of freedom and fun. I am grateful for the National parks I have been able to visit along with my opportunities to travel. I feel my paintings are where art and science meet. I feel there is a balance that one strives for between your logical, science, sequential side of the brain and the intuitive, adventure, and creative artistry side of the brain. I love the feeling of constantly being challenged and inspired. I hope you do too.

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In keeping with Duke Raleigh Hospital’s mission to promote art as part of healing, community exhibits in this space predominantly feature stimulating and colorful artworks. Enter the hospital through the main entrance and travel down main corridor to see VAE Community Exhibition. 

Exchange Gallery: May Featured Artists

May 2016 Featured Artists

May 6th-26th, 2016
Opening Reception: May 6th, 6-10pm

William Breazeale

I am a representational landscape painter. I have lived and worked in the Raleigh/Durham area for over forty years, and have witnessed a remarkable transformation of the rural landscape into a complex urban environment.  This rapid rate of change in our surroundings offers subject matter for my work: the sometimes jarring juxtaposition of the old with the new; the perception of the transitory replacing the permanent; and the contrast between the basic and the complicated.
The result is that my work often incorporates a panorama illustrating the scale, complexity, and vast expanse of our urbanizing surroundings -- one that contrasts with the partial and incremental view we encounter in our everyday lives.   At times I use exaggerated perspectives (from close to the ground or an aerial view) to emphasize the abstract relationships of urban forms and open spaces.  In other cases, the constituent parts of mundane objects/scenes can be reorganized to create a new version of commonly experienced places, such as parking deck or airport baggage claim area.
Since I have spent most of my adult life here I have developed associations with locations in the region that have meaning to me. As such my work tends to be of specific, recognizable sites.
I am currently working on a series of Downtown Durham cityscapes that explore the relationship between the past and the present. The downtown historic district, containing wonderful examples of art nouveau and classical revival styles, provides rich subject matter, especially for rendering of architectural details. The redevelopment south of the railroad tracks provides a contrast - in both scale and form - to the original Central Business District.

Jim Hallenbeck

My art has largely been of landscapes, cityscapes, and, at times, the people captured in these scenes. My approach in painting is to represent each subject realistically, while at the same time to accentuate its bright colors. I find my approach to painting to be one of deep introspection complete with a wide range of emotions - inner peace, happiness, honesty, and truth. In turn, I hope to communicate something to the viewer, to trigger an emotion, to spark a memory that resonates on a very unique personal level.

Ann Howe

Growing up in rural Virginia I spent much of my free time outdoors and learned to know and love the natural world and to develop some sense of the mystery that resides there; this has stayed with me throughout my life and informs my work. Art has the power to make us see even the most familiar things in a new light; in the works shown here I aimed for scenes as they appear in memory or the imagination, leaving the viewer free to find his or her own meaning or emotional response.

In all of my work I try to respond to the different possibilities offered by the several media that I use. The fluidity of the hot wax used in this work gives it more freedom and spontaneity than my work in other media and this, in turn, makes me see things in a new light.

Mary Storms

I express my artistic vision through abstract mixed-media landscapes. I am intrigued and inspired by the natural environment.  My intent is to provide the viewer with a sense of the symbiotic relationship between the primeval elements - stone, soil, water and sky - and the lifeforms these elements nurture.   

I love experimenting with color, be it bold and vibrant or quiet and subdued.  No matter what palette I use, my mixed media canvases and many of my acrylic-only canvases are usually textured.   For mixed media, I layer torn or cut handmade paper and/or recycled magazine paper with acrylic paint, sculpting paste and an occasional found object.   To add additional depth and texture, portions of some layers are literally scrubbed off with water before the paint, glue or sculpting paste has completely set. Some of these scrubbed portions are left “raw”, while others are repainted and/or papered over.   For my acrylic-only canvases, I apply thick layers of paint with brushes, palette knives and my hands.