Chris Young
REX Heart & Vascular
May 2018 - January 2019
> Community Exhibits
May - June
ARTIST BIO
Courtney Potter has worked as a professional painter, photographer, filmmaker, and artist for the last decade. As a child she explored multiple art forms—performing in the St. Louis children’s touring choir, writing and illustrating short stories, and playing piano at Carnegie Hall in high school.
Courtney graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2009 with a degree in Photojournalism. Her photography projects have taken her across the world and earned her multiple awards including College Photographer of the year, WPJA, WPPI, and the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. Her paintings have been featured in art shows along the East Coast, and she’s currently preparing for three 2018 solo exhibitions in the North Carolina Triangle (Raleigh – Durham – Chapel Hill) where she lives.
Authenticity and love fuel Courtney’s work and life purpose. Just like you, she values excellence and soul: she’s not a fan of trends, tropes, or mediocrity. Your artwork won’t look like everyone else’s, because you aren’t like everyone else. You live your life boldly from a foundation of love, and you want paintings and photographs that match your truth.
Courtney helps individuals (who love themselves), couples (who love each other), and creative business owners (who love their work) tap into their own authenticity and creativity. She does this through her exquisite abstract paintings that transform your living space, honest wedding photos that celebrate your quirks and your deep love for your community, stunning boudoir photos that remind you how you feel in your sexiest moments, or soulful branding visuals that let your inspiration behind your brand really shine through.
When not painting or making photographs, you’ll probably find Courtney rockclimbing, chasing her dream to live on a houseboat with her boo, or exploring the Pacific Northwest. Her deepest joy is found in exploring (whether it’s new ideas, the world, or her own creativity) and connecting (with her community, her family, and her friends).
Also, the pelvis is her power symbol.
Aloft Raleigh
April - June
ARTIST STATEMENT
William Drewitx (Bill) is an emerging artist that has worked with ink for 35 years. Creating intricate pen and ink drawings since he could hold a pencil, he recently embraced his artistic ability to create photos that are a unique blend of color, light, and design.
Nature reflects the duality within each of us. Nature is chaotic and harmonious, violent and peaceful, tumultuous and still, cunning and innocent.
Humans are a part of this duality, capable of malicious acts and of benevolent kindness.
The photos of William Drewitz embody the duality of nature and humanity where chaos and harmony play together in a single photo.
How the image affects the viewer is a reflection of the inner self at that moment.
By mixing UV ink, solvents, and oils a pattern is created and then photographed digitally using macro-photography. The art was born from a desire to have a creative outlet coupled with a major life change. It shows the complexity, the beauty, the emotion, and the ever-changing flow of our lives. Bill hopes you find yourself in the experience of these pieces. Everyone sees something different and has a different emotional reaction to any given design.
What do you see?
ALoft RDU
April - June
ARTIST STATEMENT
Chryssha Guidry was born in Florida in 1991. In 2013, she
graduated from Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL, with a BFA in Fine
Arts, Psychology, and a minor in Graphic Design. In 2014, after traveling
across country in a Chevy Conversion van, she landed in Asheville, North
Carolina. Finding a true love for North Carolina, she now resides in
Durham, NC.
This work started as a form of therapy, a method of release. The actions
organically evolve amongst each other, and she emphasizes these
relationships visually. Information is being obscured rather than
revealed. The continuous direction combines multiple perspectives, each
one making the last more obscure showing the whole is less than the
sum of its parts. There is a physical experience that can be considered
the peak, if not the overall purpose of one’s perception of this work. This
is experienced through relaxing and surrendering to the emotion that is
transpiring lulling them into a reflective escape.
ARTIST STATEMENT
In my current practice I build large wall collages, called texture matrices, from paper, tape, and other leftover studio materials, then I make rubbings from the matrices as they evolve. The rubbings are made with wax pastel, watercolor crayon, and sometimes charcoal on paper or Yupo, and then some sections are worked in more detail with colored pencil and/or soft pastel. The completed rubbings are treated with an archival varnish.
Most of the pieces in this show were made from the Texture Matrix #3, identified as “TM3” in the titles. Four of these are collages created by combining two rubbings from adjacent areas on the matrix. The remaining pieces came from Texture Matrices #1 and #2 (TM1 & TM2) which were created during a residency at MassMOCA in August of 2017.
The process of creating the texture matrices and then making rubbings from them is like hiding a treasure and then rediscovering it. Even though I create the matrix, I can’t keep all the layers and their possible interactions in working memory, so every rubbing is a discovery of what’s there, what elements will come to the fore at each stage of the matrix’s evolution. Rubbings force me to work in the realm of the hidden, and to trust what will be revealed. I am intrigued by the play between what is hidden and what is revealed, and most particularly interested in what needs to remain hidden. Just as tree roots can only function properly if they stay hidden underground, much of what is important to our inner life must transpire underneath what is visible/conscious/apparent. Like X-rays, the rubbings reveal much of what is hidden beneath the layers of the texture matrix, but there is also a limit to what is revealed.
10020 Sellona St, Raleigh, NC 27617
March, 2018 - June, 2018
United Arts Council
March
Artist Statement
Artists are part of every aspect of society, there is nothing created that does not include an artistic principle as much as it includes mathematical and physical science.
I have always merged science and art in my work. I live my life reflecting my ethical beliefs and artistic philosophy. My work embodies what I am: for good or bad, for perfect or flawed. The objects I create are imbued with my struggle to understand the unpredictability and the complexity of being human in the 21st century: as an older woman, as an American Latina, as a wife and mother, and as a believer in an ethical political/economic system for the world we live in.
This series of drawings/paintings embodies my research into the NeuroMorphic Universe that we all inhabit, playfully transcending the complexity of life.
My Hand is my Mind.
Artist Bio
Natacha Sochat was born in Manhattan, New York City. As a very young child she grew up in Habana, Cuba. Her father was a Cuban revolutionary. In later childhood, her family lived in the south Bronx. Her love of art was nurtured while growing up in the rich cultural landscape of NYC. She attended the Bronx HS of Science. Natacha lived and worked in Europe in the early 1970’s, travelling to many different cities viewing many artistic works in person. She worked as a professional photographer in Berlin, Germany, including freelance work for "Berlin Today" magazine. After Berlin she moved to Boston MA in 1974, where she attended Boston University. She is a Summa Cum Laude graduate of Boston University (BA Biology with distinction, minor art history). Her post-baccalaureate studies at Brandeis University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston included painting, printmaking, photography, and video. She received her MFA in Studio Arts from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her MFA thesis embodied the NeuroMorphic Universe - our connectedness biologically and otherwise, and her work still resides in this realm to this day. She received her MD degree from Boston University School of Medicine.
Natacha met Michael Sochat in 1975 while attending Boston University and they married in 1980. While at Boston University College of Liberal Arts, Natacha met Arthur Polonsky and Harold Tovish. Their philosophies greatly influenced her decision to be an artist. She learned how to code in 1975 before the personal PC was introduced. This was the stepping stone for Natacha to the world of computers that she would later naturally incorporate into her artistic process.
In 2010 Natacha co-founded NKG (Boston contemporary art gallery, now closed). NKG gave voice to the pluralism that continually enriches contemporary art and ideas. NKG's mission was to further contemporary art by giving equal value to the mind and the hand. Natacha curated many exhibitions and works during this time. She also created and managed the gallery’s website.
Natacha has taught at numerous places including School of the Museum of Fine Arts (painting), the New Hampshire Institute of Art (drawing/printmaking), and was Master Teacher in Studio Arts at the St. Paul's School Advanced Studies Program (Concord, NH). She is an interdisciplinary thinker, curator, and artist including painting, printmaking (etching, relief, monoprint, etc), bookmaking, small sculptural objects, performance, video, drawing, and photography. Her work is in numerous collections, has won many awards and has been in exhibitions throughout the United States. She was a member of the College Board Association and served on the Board of the Woman's Caucus for Art (NH), including President and webmaster.
In 2015 Natacha left NH and moved to Raleigh, NC where she currently resides and has a studio in ArtSpace.
2100 Hillsborough street, Raleigh
10-4 Monday-Sunday
Jan. 15-April 15, 2018
HagerSmith Designs
January - February
ARTIST STATEMENT
I seek to eliminate all or most realistic imagery from my work. I acquit myself from making work that has been expected of me. I focus on manipulation of media while immersed in the process of creating. Pieces are built with layers of media, constructing the final product over time through multiple working sessions. Basic elements and principles of art such as line, shape, color and movement are key components in my current body of work. I use minimal tools in the process of creating pieces often using my hands, fingers and breath to guide mediums around the working surface. Spontaneous and unplanned moments occur in every piece, which is exciting and challenging to me.
When I was a teenager, my attitude towards making art shifted dramatically as I let go of the notion that successful art had to be realistic. I was enamored by artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Wassily Kandinsky, Frank Stella and Jackson Pollock. Their work supported the ideas I had; to be focused on color, process, composition, etc. I knew that I could make tightly rendered, realistic work, but never felt comfortable with those creations representing me as an artist. I eventually listened to my instincts and started to strip away imagery, or at the very least abstract it. I allowed myself to focus on process, use of media and the basic components of art. I held onto this foundation through my college body of work, which allowed me to heavily investigate my viewpoint as an artist. I completed most of my work in clay and glass during this time (BFA, Alfred University 2002). As I moved into my professional teaching career, the artist I became started to dwindle. As educators, we strive every day to inspire our students to find their own personal voice in their artwork. As educator-artists, we often struggle with finding that very voice in our own work. I found myself back at the crossroads of feeling like I was supposed to make realistic art, as that was a great deal of what I was required to teach. I started many pieces that have never been finished and at times I was paralyzed by indecision and the pressure to be a realist. I placed a false reality on myself as a realistic artist. As a result, my authenticity and creativity suffered.
Over the past year, I have revisited my artistic influences and have opened up again to the mindset I established over twenty years ago. I have placed no restriction on myself regarding what a final piece should look like. I get lost in the process of creation and media manipulation. The subject matter, style and media are now my confident choices, not decisions that I feel were made for me. After years of dormancy, I have finally revealed work that is authentic and genuine.
Aloft Raleigh
January - March
ARTIST STATEMENT
Chaos has been defined as the first thing to exist.
New ideas emerge from it. Society moves forward because of it. Weather changes because of it. Art is created from it.
The world is full of chaos. Mental, physical, and environmental chaos comes at us at all times. But the world is also full of beauty. And sometimes this beauty is found in the chaos.
Even something as simple as a child’s Slinky toy can turn into chaos. Once tangled, it can never be returned to its original form. Why not take the misshapen, both in life and in objects, and make something out of it? You may be surprised by what results.
Exhibitions at United Arts are mounted in The MJH Gallery. This space is located in the historic Pine State Creamery building in the Glenwood South district of Downtown Raleigh. This exhibition space features great natural light, views from the storefront windows, and an opening reception as part of Raleigh's First Friday Gallery Walk. This venue features exhibits of 2D and 3D work each month. While UAC does not offer and artist stipend, they host the largest First Friday out of our CEP and are one of the best selling venues.
Read MoreUnited 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.
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.
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.
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.
Aloft RDU
November - January
ARTIST STATEMENT
The act of making a mark on the art surface is the beginning of my creative process. The mark-making could be with graphite, a painted line, a piece of painted paper, or any number of mark-making tools. The act of creating with a particular chosen media leads to an intuitive, creative exploration of those materials. The artistic decision-making in the subsequent layers explores process and product, sometimes by design and sometimes by surprise. Discovering these creative explorations and surprises is why I feel it necessary to create my art.
My art is abstract with an emphasis on expressionism, sometimes focusing on lines and shapes, sometimes including an abstract human form, and sometimes a mixed-media collage with the theme: a political/social/feminist statement.
I want the viewer to experience the painting as a journey through the mark-making, splatters, drips, and/or color changes. I want them to experience the textural changes, the surface treatments, and the small moments within the painting. I want the viewer to question the political/social/feminist female body collages and to influence their thinking and perception.
As a former elementary art educator, I saw many children get lost in the act of creating, simply enjoying moving paint on their paper, and creating marks. This is my reason for creating, to attempt to capture the childlike joy in color, shape, line, pattern, and forms.
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
Aloft Raleigh
October - December
ARTIST BIO
Cathy is not, nor does she proclaim to be, a music connoisseur but what she will say is she appreciates a good groove and if it offers up a funky bass-line, then all the better. It is that very groove that guides her along in the process by which she creates her Art.
At the base of each piece of Art is her photography. The majority of Cathy’s work stems from photographs she has captured at live music events. And on occasion she has been so moved and inspired that she captures a screenshot from her television and proceeds to turn that into a piece of Art.
In 2011, Reflections by Cathy Foreman was created and she hasn’t looked back. Currently a resident of Raleigh, NC, by way of Tillery, NC, Cathy has carved out her own space in which she comfortably sits – but it didn’t happen overnight. In what she says seems like a long and arduous road, she started simply by shooting small get-togethers with her girlfriends and high school classmates. After that, she started going on “shoot-abouts” and capturing the people and things in her surroundings. In 2012, a connection to a local non-profit focused her talents as she slowly integrated texture into her work. She was cautious as she was unsure how it would be accepted, but in 2014, she realized she has always beat to a different drum, and firmly planted her feet in what she now calls “Photography to Art”.
Through music, Cathy has found that the animation of Artists, affords her a unique opportunity to interpret their performance and energy, it has helped to mold her creative style. Once she narrowed the area of which she wanted to concentrate, she delved further into the manipulation of the photograph thus creating these photographic works of art.
Today, Cathy primarily photographs live music events, but she continues to hone her craft by staying true to her grassroots and doing shoot-abouts in whichever city or town she happens to be. Her heart lies with creating Art and it is those artistic pieces you will often see.