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.

Brian Imfeld / HagerSmith

Brian Imfeld

HagerSmith
November/December
 

Artist Statement

Can we understand anything absolutely and completely? Even if we study and measure every quality we see, there are important characteristics that are beyond our ability to measure. Measuring and organizing helps everyone to better understand how the world works.  But the full picture is still always slightly, we hope only slightly, beyond full comprehension.    

My work is compositionally inspired by the visual language of graphs, charts, and writing. When I plan and lay out my work, I incorporate grids, consider margins, and arrange symbols to create a space where the placement of something has meaning and is in part defined by our experiences with other visual forms of communications.  Grid lines could divide individuals or highlight their commonalities, and a line graph could represent changes between two points but could also be a horizon line.  As I collect data for each piece, I determine a layer by layer procedure to incorporate each piece of information into the same space.

I choose many of my materials for the textures they allow me to create. My aim is to elicit an impression about the environment of the artwork; similar to the way walking in the sand or stepping on broken glass might also conjure an impression. Incorporating found objects and unconventional art-making materials allows the nature of the materials to represent for me unclear characteristics that cannot be defined or quantified.  Spread over the entire surface, these non-quantifiables are present everywhere.

As a constant observer, I always feel that if I continue to look at a problem I may find a new perspective from which to see it. Through my art-making process, I might determine where I exist within the composition. And maybe you can see yourself somewhere in the grid also.   

Biography

Brian Imfeld was born in 1978 in Beaufort, South Carolina. As the son of military parents he studied and learned in many towns and cities in the eastern United States. In 2001, Brian earned his BFA in Printmaking and BS in Art from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. His work has been included in exhibitions in Ohio and North Carolina. He recently exhibited a piece in the 2017 North Carolina Artist Exhibit at the Duke Energy Center in Raleigh, NC.  Brian currently lives and works as an Art teacher in Raleigh, NC.

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.