MONTEREY PENINSULA COLLEGE ART GALLERY PRESENTS:
“WRAPPED UP”
EXHIBIT DATES: 29 APRIL – 30 MAY 2008
LOCATION: MPC ART DEPARTMENT GALLERY, 980 FREMONT ST., MONTEREY
HOURS: TUESDAY THROUGH FRIDAY, 10:00 - 3:00 or by appointment (call 646-3060)
TWO ARTIST RECEPTIONS: THURSDAY, May 1, 2008, 12:00 – 2:00pm AND FRIDAY, MAY 2, 6:00 TO 8:00PM
Monterey, CA (4/18/08) ···· The Monterey Peninsula College Art Gallery is pleased to announce our next exhibition, “WRAPPED UP”.
MPC faculty instructor, Theresa Lovering-Brown, will be showing exquisite new work in jewelry and metal sculpture. Theresa took a sabbatical from her teaching duties last year and traveled to Japan, Cambodia, Viet Nam and Laos to find inspiration for her explorations in metal. She tells us, “I look to cultural arts for inspiration. I continue to learn and be astonished by historical artifacts and am amazed by the sophistication of crafts and art in historical cultures and societies from peoples of the world, past and present.”
Theresa wraps fine silver wire around a wire core to create gorgeous pieces reminiscent of knitting, crocheting and coiled basketry. Some are wearable, some are purely sculptural and all are dynamic and beautifully crafted. This is a rare opportunity to see one-of-a-kind “woven” creations created by one of California’s finest metal artists. The work is stunning and the pieces are for sale.
The exhibit will be on display at MPC from the 29th of April through the 30th of May 2008.
Admission is free. Parking fee: 4 quarters (one dollar in change)
All are welcome!
My current body of work takes me back to my beginnings, my roots, my foundation and foray into the making process of crafts and metal arts. As a child, when I wasn’t playing outside, I was in the house making things, working with my hands, enjoying the process and the finished product. Sewing, knitting, macramé, crocheting and weaving were hobbies I engaged in making simple naïve projects. My Grammie taught me to knit when I was six; this began my life long love of wrapping a string around a rod. A few years later I made God’s Eyes (Ojo de Dios), another wrapping process. Around 1973 I became enthralled with wirework, I could take my artwork with me on the bus back and forth to school. In high school I was juried into my first competitive art exhibit on the merit of my macramé and at San Diego State University I took a semester length course titled Textile Techniques in Metals with Arlene Fisch, a true innovator of fiber techniques in the metal arts field. This innovative class covered most of the textile techniques I had used during my impressionable youth but it never occurred to me to used metals for textile techniques prior to this course. At age 16 and for the next 11 years, I was under the tutelage of Phyllis Smith in which she taught me the basics of metal working. By age 24 it was clear I was destined to be a metalsmith. Twenty plus years later, after abandoning wire as the primary form of a piece, I utilize and incorporate textile techniques as the spirit of design takes over my creative vision.
Born in Berkeley and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area as far back as I can remember I have had an interest and fascination with other cultures. At age three my playmates were a brother and sister of Chinese descent; from age six to 18 years old, I lived in a low-income housing project and my friends were of mixed races. In pursuing my educational dream it was a natural fit to study cultures and art so I pursued three degrees in college: an Associate in Arts, a Bachelors of Arts and a Masters of Fine Arts. Sixteen years after graduate school, as a college art instructor, I expose my students to a variety of historical and contemporary cultural arts to inspire them with the richness of cultures from around the world. Through ongoing research for teaching assignments, I continue to look to cultural arts for inspiration. I continue to learn and be astonished by historical artifacts and am amazed by the sophistication of crafts and art in historical cultures and societies from peoples of the world past and present.
This wire jewelry comes from my personal background and my life-long interest in the wonders and beauty of the natural world as is apparent from the organic structures of these pieces. All of these pieces are made with fine silver wire wrapped around a wire core. The technique used is a traditional textile or basketry process called coiling. Over time if the core wire is steel, the steel begins to rust and the silver begins to turn brown taking on a new life allowing for the natural world to take over and my workmanship becomes secondary to the design of the piece.
Finally, the stimuli for these creations have culminated over time working as an artist and making body ornament, art to wear. The crochet process has allowed me to take my studio on the road, which has given me freedom to create almost anywhere in the same way a painter takes their studio outdoors or a musician performs on-the-road in different venues. No matter where I am, if I take a few supplies and a couple of hand tools, I can and have created in many impromptu settings including in cars, on planes and ferries, in hotel rooms and in lectures halls, during meetings at school and at baseball games, at the ocean’s edge and in many parts of the Hawaiian Islands. I amaze myself at the new venues I find myself creating in. The spontaneity of working outside the box is fun and stimulating and influences the end product. I always look forward to traveling with my art and enjoy working in new unpredictable environments.