The Shadow
Clifton Forge, Va. (VR) – Opening on Tuesday, August 2, 2022, at the Alleghany Highlands Arts and Crafts Center, Clifton Forge, VA is an exhibit called “EARTHSCAPE.” It may be the ideal exhibit for the dog days of summer. Artists Pat Carr and Jennifer Spoon, have created works that reflect their interest in the natural world. Their attention to detail, the varied materials, ideas, and images presented is both exciting and soothing. Pat Carr loves to draw with pen, pencil (graphite), and paints with watercolor. Jennifer Spoon creates handmade paper and pulp paintings, integrating them with graphic design skills and love of typography to create works of both subtlety and strength. Both artists also reveal a quick wit through the titles of the work found in the gallery.
“Nature is the anchor for my creativity; hence my design process is to be constantly observant of my surroundings,” says Pat Carr. “It can inspire me literally or abstractly. Really ‘seeing’ is about discovering the beauty all around us. The Earth’s surface is like a natural flea market displaying her treasures – sometimes subtlety, sometimes blatantly – in all her stages of glory and decay. I love the idea of something that’s unwanted being the source of beauty – objects that have naturally changed their course through rust, rot, weather, and wear unveil stories and unlock memories exposing our personal lives. Global concerns and the urgency for environmental awareness have awakened a sense of personal smallness in my existence. I have chosen to expand these ideas about my place in the world and my sense of creation with works that show my respect and reverence for nature’s order and disorder. I often work in a series that expands on a theme or a concept and provides different formats for expression. Being in the presence of nature centers me and gives me the calm to begin the creative process. Through my art, I can share my relationship with nature and my perception of Earth’s beauty. Sometimes responding to an object or a scene is best expressed with watercolors, capturing the varieties of color, value, detail, and diffusion. Other times, nature’s patterns, textures, and color harmonies are best represented through the physical and tactile manipulation of mixed media and natural materials. My goal is to create artworks that compel the observer to step closer and share the peaceful connection I feel in nature’s moments of meditative dialogue.”
Patricia T. Carr taught high school art in the Roanoke County Schools for more than thirty years, all the while establishing a serious exhibition schedule that includes numerous awards. She has earned Signature status with the Virginia Watercolor Society; participated in the Taubman Museum’s Sidewalk Art Show in Roanoke for 35 years; and is a longtime member of the Market Gallery in Roanoke, to name just a few art accomplishments.
Jennifer Spoon holds degrees in Studio art, art history and graphic design. She has been making art since childhood. Spoon has traveled widely absorbing other cultures, traditions, and languages. She has also enjoyed residencies in Japan and France, and workshops in Korea, Italy, and the United States.
“I work with wet fingers and digital imagery, back and forth between digital and traditional media,” says Spoon. “I make my paper outdoors using western and Japanese methods and both natural and commercial dyeing agents. Summer days are spent gathering fiber, processing it, and making paper. Nights I spend at the computer working with digital images, informed by a love of type and typography that I use in graphic design. The immediacy and speed of the digital image helps me realize my ideas quickly and in countless variations. I can take scanned traditional work adding and combining in endless variation. I print digitally drawn or manipulated images and collage them with the actual textures of my handmade paper, fabric, wire, and/or water colored and inked images. In many of my pieces, I combine images in a process called “computage” and print them on handmade paper. With my recent work, I try to reconcile the natural beauty of the mountains of Virginia with troubling world issues such as the status of women and the horrors of war. Other work treats the controversies surrounding religion and evolution.”
These two artists and their work are bold and subtle by turns, incorporating new techniques and old traditions. The differences in their media and style are fascinating, but they connect through their intense appreciation of and concern for the natural world. This is an exhibit not to be missed.
Carr and Spoon’s work will remain on view through September 2, 2022. Please, don’t miss this one, and bring a friend. There will be plenty of ideas and details to talk about on the way home or revisit!
The Alleghany Highlands Arts and Crafts Center is supported by its members, contributors, the Town of Clifton Forge, the City of Covington, the County of Alleghany, The Alleghany Foundation, The Virginia Commission for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
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| Recording Nature by Jennifer Spoon |
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| Watercolor by Pat Carr |
