Chris Young I UAC

Chris Young

United Arts Council
February

ARTIST STATEMENT

Windswept mountain ridges. Quiet forest trails. Cliffs overlooking an expansive sea. Big skies
and dramatic vistas. I’m drawn to nature.

Inspiration comes from local venues, as well as, far-flung destinations like Iceland and
Tasmania. While hiking, I fill sketchbooks with pen and watercolor drawings, translating those
images into larger oil paintings in my studio. I think of myself as a plein air artist who also paints
indoors.

My recent landscapes range from impressions to abstraction. They are created with oil and cold
wax - applied, layered, scraped, and marked - creating textured and complex expressions of
nature.

ARTIST BIO

Chris Young is an Iowa native and a 21 year Cary, NC resident. While also active in the
business world and as a community volunteer, she has been a professional artist for 4 years.
Chris has exhibited in Cary and Raleigh and her paintings are in private collections coast to
coast.

Saundra Smith Rubiera / UAC

Saundra Smith Rubiera

United Arts Council
December

ARTIST STATEMENT

I have spent my life studying, teaching, and making art. What inspires me to pick up a pencil, brush, or pen, and make marks on paper or canvas is the same now as it was when I first started out as an artist: color, pattern, and flattened space.

For me, color needs to be as intense and bright as I can make it. I want my colors to be exciting, like opening a new box of crayons on the first day of school.

My work is flat and decorative.  I am mad for pattern, texture, and interesting marks. I like the movement they create in a drawing or painting and the way they activate the surface by breaking large shapes into smaller colored spots.

Although I draw from life, I make a conscious effort to flatten the space in the picture plane by tilting it toward the viewer and altering the perspective. The objects looked stacked, one on top of the other, vertically, rather than one behind the other, horizontally.

There is also an element of "storytelling" in my work.  The objects I draw and paint are objects I touch or use every day--objects perhaps unimportant to others, but which have meaning for me beyond my finding them interesting or beautiful. These objects evoke stories from my own memories or sometimes stories I make up about them.

I find these stories funny or whimsical, sometimes sad, sometimes silly. We all struggle, I think, daily, with horrors in the news and difficulties in our own lives.  In my drawings, there is no cruelty or violence, no war or hunger or pain. I am aware that this is not the real world, but I want the viewer to forget all that if only for a moment. I want my work to be a feast for the eyes.

BIO

Saundra Smith Rubiera is a North Carolina artist who works in colored pencils, markers, acrylic paints, and linocuts. She has an MFA degree from East Carolina University with a major in painting and a minor in printmaking. She is a retired art teacher and has illustrated three published books. Saundra’s work has been exhibited in national, regional, and local shows. Her business, Dancing Lady Designs, creates custom art and furniture for children’s rooms.

Saundra was a 2017 recipient of an Individual Artist Grant. The grant funded the framing of this travelling show which has been shown in six locations throughout the state. The Regional Artist Project Support program is administered and funded by the Arts Council of Fayetteville/Cumberland County with support from the NC Arts Council and the counties of Lee, Moore, Richmond, Robertson, and Scotland, the City of Fayetteville, Cumberland County, and private contributions.

Lloyd Konneker / United Arts Council

Lloyd Konneker

November - December
United Arts Council

A Solabile is a solar-powered mobile ala Calder.  Like mobiles, they move, but not only in air currents, also when the sun shines. The work honors the sculptor George Rickey, and Walter De Maria’s “Lightning Field” landscape art.

The different models work under different light conditions.  All current models are indoor models.  Some models can stand direct sunlight.  Other models work under bright office lights or indirect sunlight in a bright room, but shouldn't be in direct sun.  More information forthcoming as more models are introduced.

I make Solabiles in my basement.  They are handmade from electronic parts, mostly from Digikey and Jameco.  I use Fritzing to design and Fab my circuit boards.  I think they are the smallest circuit boards every fabbed by the Fritzing Fab, only a few square centimeters.
Soon I will also publish a history of solar-powered mobiles as I understand it.

Jane Cheek / United Arts Council

Jane Cheek

United Arts Council
November

BIO

Jane Cheek is a mixed media artist who works in an abstract expressionist style. She enjoys working with bright colors, metallic accents, and texture to create art that plays with whimsy and elegance. Jane is interested in using the balance of artistic opposites to represent the balance of emotions she has as a survivor of child abuse with a happy life as an adult. She finds joy and inspiration in nature, her three exuberant children, her amazing husband, and the wonderfully supportive and loving people in her life. When you look at Jane's work you might notice the unmixed colors of Fauvists like van Gogh paired with the simplistic playful shapes of expressionists such as Miró and Kandinsky. In her works with craft and sculptural elements, you may see influences of Janet Echleman and Juame Plensa. Jane's work is a daily practice of seeking and creating joy.

Jane attended North Carolina State University where she received a BA in Visual Arts Applications. After graduating, Jane taught art for five years at a K-8 charter school in Durham while working in her home studio and began selling work at local art fairs. She took a few years off while her children were newborns and then resumed work in her home studio. Jane’s work is currently on display at Read With Me, Emily & Co, and Lavish. When she isn't working on art, she and her family can be found living the unschooling life at local parks, and museums, and traveling as often as possible.

ARTIST STATEMENT

In this collection I am exploring contradictory artistic elements. I am working with the relationships between opacity and translucency; two dimensions and three; structure and complete abstraction; whimsy and elegance. I have used these elements to explore the contradictions between my own past as an abused child and my present as a happy mother, wife, and artist. I used bright colors and metallic accents to create happy expressionist work because I have chosen to seek and create joy in my life.

Kelly Sheppard Murray / UAC

Kelly Sheppard Murray

United Arts Council
August - September

Artist Bio/Statement

Kelly Murray has been working as an artist, educator, and designer for more than 20 years. Since 2000, she has taught studio and art appreciation to adult learners of all ages at Wake Technical Community College. By teaching art majors and students with limited knowledge of the arts, Kelly has observed how people interact with and appreciate visual culture. She has supported hundreds of students in finding their own creativity to employ for personal and professional pursuits.

Kelly’s teaching informs her approach to her fine art and design. By working with audiences of varied aesthetic perspectives, Kelly is prepared to find a way to meet a client’s or community’s needs and purposes. For the last 15 years, Kelly has worked with numerous design and fabrication companies to create sculptures, dioramas, small models and murals for nature, science and history centers.

Environmental issues, land development and the relationship of human activity and nature has been a core interest for Kelly throughout her career and the primary focus of much of her personal fine art production.  Kelly has been exploring encaustic wax painting for the last 10 years.  This passion for molten wax is derived from years casting metal using lost-wax metal casting. Encaustic painting was a natural way to bring her sculptural background and pursuit of painting together because it can easily translate into two or three-dimensional compositions.

Kelly is interested in exploring the ways her experience as an exhibition designer, fabricator, sculptor and painter can be brought together for clients on commercial, public art and fine art projects.

Rick Carlson / UAC

Rick Carlson

United Arts Council
August

Artist Statement

Twelve years ago I started my own graphic design business. In-between design assignments, I paint. Contemporary impressionism best describes my style. Like the early Impressionists, it is my fascination of how light interacts with form and color. The final result is not a representation, but instead my interpretation of the subject. Simplifying the moment and making the most impact. As an artist, I try to embellish on this and create a piece that is unique and appealing to the viewer.

Michael Bambuch / United Arts Council

Micheal Bambuch

United Arts Council - March 

   I'm not cool enough to talk about myself in the third person. I'm a photographer, original from the northeast(New Jersey and Massachusetts), that has landed in Apex, North Carolina.

    I shoot people. I love conceptual. I want my photos to be dynamic, to shape a perception, whatever you feel it might be. I do not have formulas and I never went to art school. I won't be able to explain or defend my work with gregarious themes and deeper meanings. I subscribe to the idea that you can just shoot something and like it. It doesn't have to go further than that. If you find something deeper, kudos, I've done something to elicit a response. I suppose that's what art is about? My photographic inspirations are Ritts, Lagrange, Blumenfeld, Wolf, Avedon and Walker. I don't think my work necessarily looks like their images, but they drive a lot of what I do.

Anthony Garcia-Copain / UAC

Anthony Garcia-Copain

United Arts Council
January - February

When I paint, I paint abstract memories. Sometimes the memory is foggy and has been replaced by an imaginary sediment, a residue that has made one memory solid and the other fluid.

Everything in art is a memory.

I have empathic traits, therefore I paint the images of the emotions that I am able to absorb from strangers and from those who surround me.

The only expectation that I have from my art is pleasure.

AGC

Helen Seebold / United Arts Council

April 2016
First Friday Reception: April 1, 6-8pm
The Creamery Building: 410 Glenwood Avenue, Suite 170, Raleigh NC 27603

Artist Statement
My artistic body of work is greatly inspired by my deep respect of Nature and a love of Ancient Cultures. Reflecting on ancient traditions and cultural practices used throughout history and across geographies, I wish to explore our connection to nature and each other; raising an awareness of the beauty that can be found in both.

Biographical Information
Helen Seebold works in clay, photography and site specific installation. She has exhibited extensively throughout New York, Connecticut and North Carolina and her pieces can be found in private collections around the globe. Recent projects have included community driven art projects for The Durham Storefront Project, Windows on Chapel Hill and Open Art Society’s POP! Downtown Art Series. Her virtual gallery can be viewed at LittleFlowerArt.com and you can follow her on her journey to explore life through art on Facebook, Twitter, and/or Instagram @LittleFlowerArt.

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The MJH Gallery is located in the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County inside The Creamery Building. UAC’s entrance faces Tucker Street. The gallery is open to the public Monday-Friday 9am-5pm and 6-8pm on First Friday.

Anthony Garcia-Copian / United Arts Council

April 2016
First Friday Reception: April 1, 6-8pm
The Creamery Building: 410 Glenwood Avenue, Suite 170, Raleigh NC 27603

Artist Statement
When I paint, I paint abstract memories. Sometimes the memory is foggy and has been replaced by an imaginary sediment, a residue that has made one memory solid and the other fluid.

Everything in art is a memory. The only expectation that I have from my art is pleasure.

Biographical Information
Anthony Garcia-Copian is an award winning playwright, artist and photographer. He was born in Cuba, raised in Madrid, Miami and New York and lives in Raleigh, NC. He has a studio by appointment only.

The MJH Gallery is located in the United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County inside The Creamery Building. UAC’s entrance faces Tucker Street. The gallery is open to the public Monday-Friday 9am-5pm and 6-8pm on First Friday.