Experiencing the Wonder of Music within the Museum Walls

Intern Jessica Curtis shares the details of her first Pianoforte Concert - going experience at the Museum (July 22, 2012)

 

The Pianoforte Series, sponsored by Harry Rowney, features a variety of esteemed pianists playing in the Asheville Art Museum’s galleries. Performing for a second time, Teresa Sumpter was the most recent performing pianist in the Pianoforte Series on Sunday, July 22.

Teresa Sumpter is currently an Assistant Professor of Piano and Coordinator of Keyboard Studies at Mars hill College where she teaches applied piano, group piano, and music theory. She earned a Ph.D. in Music Education with an emphasis in Piano Pedagogy and a Master of Music degree in Piano Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Oklahoma. She also possesses a Bachelor of Music degree in Piano Performance from Ball State University.

The program began with:

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

            Sonata No. 12 in A-flat minor, Op. 26 (1800-1801)

                        Andante con varianziono

                        Scherzo, allegro molto

                        Maestoso andante, Marcia funebre sulla morte d’ un ereo

Allegro

After the performance, Sumpter stood to address the audience “from the heart”, thanking them for not only attending the performance, but also addressing her personal intentions in performing for the Museum’s Pianoforte Series.

Sumpter described her passion for music through the medium of piano as, “a love story.”  Addressing the audience, Sumpter stated how she intended to, “share with you my love story, which is today’s recital.” Sumpter spoke of the music within the program to have been simply, “been strung together by sure will.”

Sumpter’s passion for her musical medium illuminated the East Wing as the audience sat in silent reverence at the tones and melodies rising from the keys. Sumpter’s movement with the music brought about a concept of personal meditation and release. Every note corresponded with an emotion. Sumpter would take long breathes between her sets, almost as if she was releasing the mindset of the previous set and preparing for the next.

Next in the composition performed was:

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951)

Sechs kleine Klavierstucke, Op. 12 (1911)

Sumpter spoke of this piece as Klavierstucke’s “journey to which all 12 tones are equal.” Despite the opposing perspectives of the some Classicists, Sumpter states that she defines Klavierstucke’s work as that of a Classicist, and remarks that he “uses a broader language to express his musical thought.”

Following Schoenberg was:

Franz Schubert (1797- 1828) Moments musicaux, D 780

            No. 2 Andatino in A-flat Major

            No. 3 Allegretto moderato in F Minor

            No. 4 Moderato in C-sharp Minor

            No 5. Allegro vivace in F Minor

The final piece performed was:

Claude Debussy (1862-1918)

Images, Book I (1905)

            Reflets dans l’eau

Hommage a Rameau

Mouvement

Introducing Teresa Sumpter as the featured artist of the summer Pianoforte recital, Mr. Harry Rowney, a Member of the Asheville Art Museum’s Board of Trustees, and a long-time supporter of the Museum, commented on the transition of location. In the past, the Pianoforte Concert Series has been located in Asheville Art Museum’s Gallery 6. It was Ms. Sumpter’s concert on Sunday, July 22 that was the first to be relocated to the Pop Art Gallery in the new East Wing of the Museum. Mr. Rowney and Nancy Sokolove, Manager of the Museum’s Adult Programs Department, asked the audience to comment on the acoustics and presentations on the new space. After the series, Sokolove noted several audience members’ positive remarks in regards to the larger space and room arrangement, making it easier to see the featured pianist.

Overall, the concert was a success, enjoyed by an audience of more than fifty Museum Members and visitors.  The audience was captured by Sumpter’s passion, and was inspired by the traditional classical music that this Pianoforte Series presented.  

The July 22 recital was the final Pianoforte performance for the summer; however, Pianoforte will return this October with a recital featuring pianist Kimberly Cann. For more information on upcoming events and concerts at Asheville Art Museum, you can visit our website: www.ashevilleart.org or follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AshevilleArtMuseum.

Lunchtime Art Breaks: Friday, June 15

Artist Project Space + Atrium Art Installations

by Jessica Curtis, Communications Intern

Lunchtime Art Breaks are a series of gallery talks and presentations hosted by the Asheville Art Museum, typically twice per month on Fridays from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. Our most recent Lunchtime Art Break featured Asheville residents and artists Hoss Haley and Gabriel Shaffer. Both artists engaged in dialogue and answered questions with participants about their work.

Haley has two featured works in the Museum: the lighting installations in the Museum’s newly renovated Atrium and a large-scale sculpture titled Cycle.  Haley’s light installation design takes what the artist calls a “structural approach” that is more reductive than minimalistic. Haley spoke of how his biggest challenge with the light fixtures was balancing the ideas of the lighting installation as both a functional light fixture and a work of art. His large enameled steel sculpture, Cycle, was chosen as the inaugural site-specific art installation for the Museum’s new East Wing Artworks Project Space, or artist project space. The sculpture will remain on view through the end of the calendar year before becoming part of the Museum’s Permanent Collection.

           

Gabriel Shaffer, the artist behind a large-scale graffiti art mural in the Museum’s Atrium titled The Writing on the Pharaoh’s Wall, referred to his graffiti work as having raw characteristics, as an art form commonly thought of as being completed without commission or permission. But in contrast, Shaffer’s mural was especially commissioned by the Museum for the public restrooms in the new Atrium. The Museum recognized a prime opportunity to showcase the talent of a local artist in the space, and to highlight the evolution of graffiti as an art form increasingly utilized in the professional art world.

Shaffer spoke of the local elements reflected in his work, noting the challenge of depicting the community using only a few images. The artist combined images inspired by local music, literary references (Thomas Wolfe), break dancing and street culture, ultimately tying the scenes together with the common thread of what Shaffer described as “the town’s relationship with art deco”.

In his artist statement Shaffer writes,

“The mural is inspired by multiple elements, the predominant influence being the quilts of Gees Bend Alabama. In addition to the quilts being extremely forward thinking and beautiful, they have also become somewhat of a national treasure. Because of my extensive experience with folk and outsider art, I have had the pleasure of viewing these quilts, and have found their arrangements, use of color and recycled fabric to be reminiscent of abstract hieroglyphics.”

Shaffer spoke of the collaborative nature of his mural, which reflects the diverse talent of several fellow graffiti artists from the community who worked closely with Shaffer to complete the installation, demonstrating a collaborative, quilt-like process. He spoke of several artists on the forefront of Asheville’s street art scene, mentioning Ruiner, Sinker, Mom’s Crew, Graffiti Masons, and the B Team, to name a few.

Shaffer’s intent was to create an open narrative with the mural, allowing viewers to interpret the work for themselves. He felt that this characteristic would allow an additional stream of consciousness to emerge in his work.

Commenting on the unusual balance of showing graffiti art within a traditional museum setting, Gabriel described the delicate issues surrounding the production of graffiti and street art, often perceived as being produced illegally. When visitors questioned the artist about the purity of the mural as true graffiti, he described the mural as a “borderline” example, commenting that graffiti may be less offensive to the viewer in this case specifically because it was a legally commissioned work of art.

Always striving to bring new, enlightening and inspiring experiences with American art to the surrounding community, the Museum warmly welcomed the opportunity to showcase such cutting edge work in a safe, public forum that allows for greater dialogue around the changing role of both art and producer in the realm of graffiti art.

For the second part of the Art Break, artist Hoss Haley spoke with guests about his large-scale sculpture adorning the Museum’s new Artworks Project Space. Having worked in sculpture on an increasingly large scale for more than three decades, the artist’s main resource for the site-specific sculpture installation was enameled steel from area scrap yards.

Haley spoke of how his relationship with the scrap yard over the years has acted as an indicator of economics, witnessing over time a correlation between the current state of the economy and the changing type and quantity of materials coming in and out of scrap yards.

Haley also defined his recycling as being “green before being green was cool.” This habit of wanting to recycle, in addition to his habit of coiling things up—such as wadded paper thrown into a trash bin—has emerged in his art as well. Haley particularly brought attention to the symbolism of “wadding”. Wadding has become a natural human action to express an object’s transition from a resource to waste. However, in practical circumstances, disposing of a material in such a way only takes up more space and density. This idea of wadding could be seen as an ultimate act of declaring something as waste.

Through Cycle, Haley observed the subconscious symbolism of recycling and waste. The artist built special machinery to create large-scale recycled enameled metal pieces representing the appearance of paper “wadded in [his] hand”. Haley spoke of his adventure into the scrap yard as a form of “post-apocalyptic hunting”, using the term “field dressing” when referring to himself and his team of assistants, describing the process of seeking our discarded washing machines and “ripping [them] open and throwing the guts out”, taking only the “skins” or outer shell of the machines.

Expanding on the symbolism of material waste and economic concerns brought to the viewer’s attention through Cycle Haley also spoke of the relatively short life span of today’s washing machines—only two years on average. Being either too expensive to service or simply out of date, it has become common practice to discard machines and purchase new ones at an increasing rate. Such fast turnover has made it nearly impossible for metal recycling plants, such as those in Spartanburg, to keep pace. This was a revelation to Haley in his creative process.

In his artist statement Haley writes,

“For decades the scrap yard has been a major source of both raw material and inspiration. As the consumer demand for cheaper products increases, the quality of the products decreases, as does the life span of the goods…Cycle became a way to exaggerate the idea of ‘tossing away’ and to demonstrate the precariousness of this act. In the end there was a satisfying moment in the process when the castoffs became commentary.”

Lunchtime Art Breaks are often not only educational and insightful, but also brimming with humorous undertones and fascinating commentary from the very artists whose works are displayed in the Museum, offering visitors a unique view into the thought process and ideas behind a work of art. During this tour, Haley demonstrated the playful nature of his work, picking up one of the remarkably lightweight balls making up Cycle, and acting as if to climb the sculpture (both of which are not permissible for visitors to the Museum).

In addition to these humorous actions, Haley also commented on the earlier iterations of Cycle, such as his idea to combine three of the balled-up washing machines. He ultimately moved beyond the idea realizing that, “they just ended up looking like snowmen.” Haley concluded his discussion of Cycle by mentioning his more current twist of the Cycle series. Now, he is making the recycled enameled steel balls out of car and truck hoods from the late 1970s and earlier. The new series in progress has more color than this installation of Cycle and is designed to hang on the walls versus being structured in sculpture form. 

For more information about Hoss Haley, please visit www.hosshaley.com. For information on Gabriel Shaffer, visit www.gabrielshaffer.com. To learn more about the artists’ current work in the Asheville Art Museum, visit www.ashevilleart.org or call 828.253.3227.

Asheville Art Museum celebrates Studio Glass with Artist-Led Tour and Discussion

Up For Discussion: Glass Secessionism

Guest Speakers: Christina Bothwell & Robert Bender

Friday, June 8th

Notes from Jessica Curtis, Asheville Art Museum Communications Intern

When you think of the word glass, what comes to mind?

A window? A picture frame?

To most, glass is stereotypically seen as an every day, inanimate object. Seen through artistic eyes, however, Christina Bothwell and Robert Bender perceive glass very differently.

Christina Bothwell and Robert Bender are both artists featured in the Glass Secessionism exhibition at Blue Spiral 1, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Studio Glass Movement and its relation to the region dating back to 1962.

The tour began in Asheville Art Museum’s current exhibition, Fire on the Mountain: Studio Glass in Western North Carolina, also celebrating the 50^th Anniversary of the movement. Participants were not only able to visually interpret the exhibitions but were also fortunate enough to hear from Christina and Robert, who narrated the exhibitions, touching upon the development, style, and intent of their respective works.

Nancy Sokolove, Adult Programs Manager, organized the special Up For Discussion tour of Studio Glass, introducing Robert and Christina’s work at the start of the tour as having a “narrative quality”. Robert expanded on the idea of narrative quality in his work by stating that, “although he has always been an artist, his first art form was not glass blowing, but rather writing and illustrating children’s novels”. It was not until meeting his wife, Christina Bothwell that their glassworks began to thrive. Christina spoke of her passion for glasswork being “intoxicating” as it “takes over” and acts like a “40 watt bulb with a thousand currents”. Robert then stated how their relationship coincides with their glasswork commenting, “We helped each other technically and creatively.”

With both Christina and Robert being self-taught glass artists, many of their techniques arose from mistakes and experiments made throughout their glasswork practice. One of their personal experiments with glass is the technique of combining Bullseye glass (a high-priced glass) with Opaque glass (a lower-priced glass). Although this practice of combining the two glasses is untraditional, Christina and Robert found that the cost effectiveness and resulting product were worth maintaining their untraditional approach.

In addition to combining different types of glass, Christina also stated that she likes when bubbles occur in her works stating, “[they] are my favorite thing.” Commenting on her personal glass blowing techniques she stated, “You get surprises and you just have to work with them.” Christina and Robert then concluded that it was through their self-taught nature with glass that they could break away from the “technical perfection” of other glass artists.

Both Robert and Christina give credit to the glasswork community, which Christina later referred to as the “Artist Covenant”, for their boldness and success.

Nancy Sokolove stated, “That is what the glass workers are known for…their sense of community.”

Robert’s final statement on the topic was that the glassworker’s sense of support and community was simply “good karma”.

At the conclusion of the tour, Christina was asked why she chose glasswork over ceramics. She replied, “Glass transmits light and clay doesn’t…it just seems more alive to me.”

Up for Discussion: Glass Secessionism, provided participants with a new perception of glass. After time spent seeing glass through the eyes of artists Christina Bothwell and Robert Bender, glass expanded beyond that of an everyday inanimate object to become a material of art, transformation and creation.

The Asheville Art Museum regularly organizes and leads a wide variety of artist discussions, guided tours and related public programs for audiences of all ages. For more information about adult education programs, please contact Nancy Sokolove at 828.253.3227, ext. 120, or email nsokolove@ashevilleart.org. A comprehensive list of upcoming summer programs and events is listed on the Museum’s Web site at www.ashevilleart.org.