ART AFTER HOURS
The second Friday of each month the gallery presents "Art After Hours" and our Artist Reception. This is a special event from 5 - 9 PM with live music during the warm weather and light hors d'oeuvres.  We offer a new and exciting art show each month, featuring the talents of selected local artists in our Guest Gallery. The entire downtown area celebrates with carriage rides and other venues that stay open late as well. Come by our studio and enjoy and support your local community artists!

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"Visions and Vibes from Vallarta" by Robbin Richardson

Robbin lives in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico three months out of the year. This lush landscape on the Pacific Coast has been her second home for many years and she breathes in the passion from the people and market scenes. As she returns to paint her canvases, the vibrant acrylic colors and inspirations are easily seen. Her style is free and very loose, what some would mainly call abstract impressionism, but she also does commissioned portraits as well. However, afterward her heart and brush usually come back to the canvas with more loose strokes and delicious color!

While in Puerto Vallarta, Robbin meets weekly to paint with a group of women in a beautiful villa near the sea. They share their love of art and give each other support and critiques as well.

Her show this summer will be the body of work inspired by her surroundings and experiences of this past winter within this group of painters. You will not want to miss this experience, so mark your calendars now and come by to meet Robbin in person at her artists' reception this July.

You may contact Robbin directly at robbin@nc.rr.com or (919) 696-6450.

Pottery was always on my to-do-sometime-in-my-lifetime list. This didn't happen until just a few years ago when I had an opportunity to take a class.   From the beginning, I knew pottery was a new dimension of creativity for me.  

In the past, I had a catering business and restaurant. Making pottery made me realize how the food business was related to almost everything I was creating with clay. The majority of my pieces are functional and adapted for using with food.  

One of the greatest joys in pottery is taking a lump of clay-- remembering that clay pieces are still being dug up after thousands of years-- and creating a form that is always one of a kind! There are no limits in what can be made with clay, a few tools and imagination.                                        -Mary Helen Jones

As a child, I was forever creating from items I found in nature and materials around the house. Pennsylvania apple-head dolls, rag style purses, paintings on board, painting an oil land and seascape on the clock dial of my grandfather's antique grandfather clock, were the beginnings of my life-long affair with art. My apprenticeship in art continues as I grow as an artist always looking for another challenge and new mediums to explore - still creating from items found in nature and materials around the house.                                 -Nancy S. Busch

"Primitive Woman"  Paper-mache' & wire, female nude 20"W x 25"H

"Layers"  Oil/acrylic abstract 14" W x 18" H

Visit Nancy's webiste at www.nancybuschstudios.com

ARTIST’S STATEMENT:

I have been drawing and painting all my life. I grew up in a little coalmining town near Charleston, West Virginia, and attended a small high school there. Fortunately, I was encouraged by a teacher who loved art and taught a short art class during our half-hour activity period. She made us all believe we could someday be artists if we tried. She suggested I go to art school, but the coalmines were worked out and closing down as I graduated from high school and my father, who was a coal miner, could not send me to college. Instead, I went to work in an office in Charleston at the ripe old age of 16. Eventually, I went to Washington, DC to work for the government, married and settled down in Maryland. I had six beautiful children to keep me busy, but when they were older, I went to work for a law firm in Washington. I did manage to take a few art classes along the way and found time occasionally to paint a little.

Over the years I have taken photographs of scenes I have seen in my travels. I kept the ones I loved most and dreamed that I would some day have time to paint all of them. That dream is now a reality. I am retired and living in Kittrell, North Carolina, and finally have time to paint. I am thoroughly enjoying the wonderful Carolina light, and those Carolina blue skies, which I like to use in my paintings.

Now my dream is that others will like my paintings as well as my children and friends do and will want to own them. My heart goes into every painting and sometimes it is very hard to part with them but there is also joy in seeing others enjoy my work.
                                                                          - Mary Jane Haley

You may contact me by email: mhaley11@wildblue.net

"For many years I have been a pastel artist. I was never completely satisfied with the medium and began to incorporate pieces of wood, fabric material and paper into the design in an effort to create texture and dimension. About a year ago I had an idea to create art on wood that was movable. I cut pieces of wood to revolve on dowels suspended in a deep wood frame. I designed abstract art on both sides. This evolved into stationary designs of nature and figures. I exaggerated the shapes and added repetitive design elements. Then the design is cut into pieces and placed on another piece of wood at different levels to create dimension. A simple wooden frame completes the piece. I finally have found my element. I have never been as happy or creative as I am now with this work."                                      - Nancy Farentatos