Martha Nodar reviews FORMATIONS exhibit

Formations: Patterns in Nature’ connects art with elements
by Martha Nodar

Mona Waterhouse, left, and Linda King, right, discuss one of Waterhouse’s
works at the Spruill Gallery in Dunwoody.

Linda King, a Brookhaven resident and frequent visitor to the Spruill Gallery in Dunwoody, felt an immediate connection with the artwork upon examining the gallery’s new exhibit.

“I absolutely feel the nature and the earth these artists bring out in their pieces,” said Linda King of Brookhaven. “It is soothing and grounding, but it also leaves you with a longing to find that place in your soul where you could be really connected.”

Curated by Buckhead resident Tania Becker, “Formations: Patterns in Nature” includes works by six Georgia artists — Kate Colpitts, Jeannine Cook, Helen DeRamus, Barbara Rehg, Gerry Sattele and Mona Waterhouse — who belong to Women Caucus for Art, a nonprofit organization devoted to women’s artistic development. The exhibit is on display through April 13. [now extended through April 27]

For Nodar's entire article in the Reporter Newspaper, click HERE

Artist Highlight: Mona Waterhouse

Mona Waterhouse, Unfolding: Women's Work detail,
 reconstructed dolies, sprayed abaca pulp, fabric, wax and colored thread
Image courtesy of the artist

In my art work I combine hand made paper with wax, pigment, and mixed media to create encaustic paintings, sculptures, photo based art, and installations. I started to use wax and pigment in my work over twenty years ago, when there was little information on how to work with it. It still fascinates me and most of my work incorporates wax and pigment in some form.

As a native of Sweden, a large part of my childhood was spent in the forests, and among the many lakes scattered throughout the landscape. It is there that my love and concern for nature began, and it is not surprising that I use it as subject matter in my work, and that paper made from plants, wax and pigment are my foundation.

Mona Waterhouse

Artist Highlight: Helen DeRamus

Helen DeRmus, Strolling Deeper, encaustic and silk on cradled panel
Image courtesy of the artist

Appreciating the power of silence during a Hambidge Residency, my current series includes drawings, monotypes and paintings. The paintings and monotypes are created using encaustic paint while the drawings are India ink, lith crayon and watercolor on paper, with encaustic medium as well. While immersed in the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains, I started the series with a hundred drawings and innumerable photographs now the impetus for the present ongoing series of images and video.

With an admiration for the dignity of the landscape, this series is a journey and renewal of the spirit. The inspiration derives from a close observation not only of the physical landscape but also of the intangibles. This journey is now encompassing layers of memory as well.

The color palette began with the almost watery blue tint I observe in the birch bark along the paths in the mountain forests along with the rusty siennas and grays, and the greens of the pines pierced with a scattering of golds. As the series continues from my first observations in the winter, new textures and hues are beginning to appear encompassing each season of the year. The temporal quality of the images are important to me, often using line and compositional elements to portray that quality.  I like to think that the images are a meditation on the passage of time.

A strong component of these paintings is my continuing interest in the alternating themes of strength and fragility and to convey that theme with the imbedding of organza photographic prints as well as monotypes on rice paper. 

Helen DeRamus

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Artist Highlight: Kate Colpitts

Kate Colpitts, Sun and Black Moon, ink, graphite, pastel, and conté
Image courtesy of the artist

When I am making art I am considering shape, space and line, very
traditional concerns.  I am making these marks with thoughts of quantum 
physics in mind, the idea that all things are a part of all other things.   
That my subject matter comes from my life, what I actually 
see and think, is important to me.  This makes it more likely that I may 
actually have knowledge of what I am talking (making art) about and makes 
the art viable.  

Sometimes I manipulate objects and shapes into a composition that looks
right and reflects what I see as their appropriate though transient relationships.  
But I am also interested in drawing and painting what I call random 
compositions, taking things the way I find them.  I like to think about how far 
you can go into visual chaos and still keep the composition in 
tact or viewable.  

I want to express movement, physically as well as intellectually.....the idea 
that there is more than one way to resolve any artistic problem.

The organic versus the designed in nature as well as in life is often a thought
in my mind as well.  

Ideally my works are the result of collaboration between the intuitive and 
the intellect.

Kate Colpitts

Artist Highlight: Gerry Sattele

Gerry Sattele, Snare, Wire

I am in the stream of self-indulgent artists who are trying to explore existence, searching for little truths, moments of feeling, to communicate.

I consider the forms I make using wire as three-dimensional drawings.  With these wire drawings, my intention is to make images that express how I feel, particularly from a feminine point of view.

-Gerry Sattele

Artist Highlight: Jeannine Cook

Jeannine Cook, Rings of Time

Image courtesy of the artist

Tanzanian by birth, European by heritage, British-American by nationality, Jeannine Cook is one of a small number of artists worldwide who specialize in silverpoint drawing. Cook's work is in many public collections in the United States and Europe.