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Feature article
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Take rewarding day trips for art viewing
By Allison Alfonso
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| Glassblower J.J. Brown, one of the featured artists. |
The conventional wisdom is we buy more art when the temperatures drop and our indoor lives take on greater meaning. Several free self-guided art tours in Western North Carolina this fall will reward our drive to see contemporary art and craft, and a Knoxville Museum of Art show will interpret how our brain processes reproduced visual information.
The ninth annual Weaverville Art Safari tour of art studios in and around Weaverville will be held Nov. 7-8 from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. A meet-the-artist reception and art preview will be held Nov. 6 from 7-9 p.m. at the Reems Creek Golf Course clubhouse. Events include a silent auction, door prizes, a cash bar and snacks. Tickets are $10 at the door.
The theme of this year’s tour is “green,” event materials say, because many of the artists are inspired by the beauty of the regional landscape and make their art out of recycled materials or use those extracted from the earth in a harmless method. Follow the Art Safari signs, download maps and brochures at weavervilleartsafaricom or pick them up at the Information Booth in downtown Weaverville the weekend of the event.
Asheville’s River Arts District Studio Stroll will be held Nov. 14-15 from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. The event has attracted national attention and this year will feature more than 130 studios of emerging and master artists in 12 historic buildings. Go see what the buzz is all about. Asheville Historic Trolly Tours will provide free shuttle service, beginning and ending at the Chamber of Commerce on Montford Avenue and making a 30-minute loop. For tour information, visit riverartsdistrict.com.
If that’s not enough, more than 100 studios and galleries in Burnsville, Spruce Pine, Bakersville and Little Switzerland will be open in December for the Toe River Studio Tour.
World-class to emerging glass blowers, potters, wood turners, basket makers, printers, painters, fiber artists, photographers, sculptors, jewelers and metal workers will welcome viewers and buyers. Many will do art demonstrations.
The tour begins Dec. 4 from noon-4 p.m., with an opening reception at the TRAC Center Gallery, 269 Oak Ave., Spruce Pine, from 5-8 p.m. Tours also run from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Dec. 5-6. Works will be on display through December at the Spruce Pine and Burnsville TRAC Gallery, 102 W. Main St. Free tour maps are available at toeriverarts.org.
Now we’re taking a leap from enjoyment and immersion in the art experience to awe. The Knoxville Museum of Art is showing “Devorah Sperber: Threads of Perception” through Jan. 24, 2010. The New York artist, who has appeared on PBS, exhibited around the world and been interviewed extensively about her process, uses digital technology to recreate and reinterpret familiar masterpieces and to research the links between art, science and technology through time. She deconstructs images to address the way the brain processes visual information vs. the way we think we see.
Show materials reveal her work is based on the technology of mechanical reproduction and how that alters images and the scale of works of art as they exist in the “minds eye.” Sperber uses spools of thread to create pixilated, inverted images. They appear as colorful abstractions to the naked eye, but when they’re viewed through optical devices are recognizable.
It’s an incredible amount of work artists will go to for us. The thread spools are hung upside down in reference to the fact that the lens of the eye projects an inverted image of the world onto the retina and the brain corrects the image. The clear acrylic sphere in front of each work functions like the human eye and brain, inverting and focusing the image so that it appears as a sharp, faithful, right-side-up reproduction of the famous painting.
Her show includes “After Van Eyck (detail),” 2006, 96-by-100-by-60 inches, 5024 thread spools and a viewing sphere; “After The Last Supper (detail),” 2005, 84-by-348-by-108 inches, 20,736 thread spools and a viewing sphere; and “After The Mona Lisa 2 (detail),” 2005 284.5-by-87.5-by-72 inches, 5184 thread spools and a viewing sphere.
Sperber will give a public lecture Oct. 28 at 7 p.m. in Room 109 of the Art and Architecture Building at the University of Tennessee. For more information, visit knoxart.org or devorahsperber.com
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