Area artists display work in Spring show
If the Gallery 1923 Spring Art Show made anything clear, it’s that Louisville is full of talent. The walls of the Gallery were filled with an assortment of unique, colorful artworks, and the floors were packed with mingling spectators and artists, all of whom were from in and around Jefferson County.
The show took place from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. on May 14 inside Pansy’s Restaurant in downtown Louisville. It featured more than 30 local artists and a number of mediums, including woodworks, pencil, acrylics, pottery, photography and oil.
“I really just try to capture Jefferson County. With the Gallery opening, I really wanted pieces that felt like home. When people looked at my art, I wanted them to instantly recognize where they were, where they’re from,” said Lee Ann Watson, a local photographer and art teacher at Thomas Jefferson Academy.
When asked what inspired her work, Watson commented that her faith held a large role.
“On a lot of the pieces, I try to actually pray over them, and try to incorporate whatever Bible verse or scripture or meaning that the Lord has. That’s how I title all of my work; Biblically,” Watson said.
Watson’s showcase at the Gallery included six pieces of both black and white photography on printed canvas. Her work depicts rural life in Jefferson County, showing tall, bright sunflowers, beams of light shining down on hay bales in a cotton field and silos under a cloudy sky.
Another artist, Erick Bernard, said that his pieces, “Are really a call back to the old ways, and what it was like to be living in a rural town in a time where it was a heavy, agrarian economy, with a lot of farmlands and stuff like that. I just really wanted to show how people were back then.”
Bernard’s corner of the exhibit featured four pencil, pen, and ink sketches, with each telling a different story of a person in the old South. In one of the drawings, titled “Hands of a Primitive,” Bernard portrays a woman’s worn, wrinkled hands in front of her dark dress, showing the result of the years of hard labor behind her.
Light played a major part in the work of Katherine Perry, another local artist featured in the show.
“I like the light, especially to see the light coming through things and shine in," she said. "In the mornings when the sun comes up, and it tips over the trees, and it just spills over the pasture, it’s just so beautiful.”
In Perry's nature photography and acrylic paintings, brightness and shadows add dimension to each piece as fractures of light shine through mountains, branches and flowers.
Additional artists featured in the spring exhibition are Sally Lauderdale, George W. Amos, Wade Franklin, Terrie Gordy and Paige Lamb, among others. Spectators at the Gallery were also entertained by Missionary Blues, a blues band based out of Savannah.
The Gallery has been managed by its president, Merritt Garrett, for the last six months. Garrett is originally from Atlanta and is an experienced artist of more than 25 years.
To learn more about Gallery 1923 and its future events, visit its website, www.gallery1923.com.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Area artists display work in Spring show
