DANCE - FINE ARTS - MUSIC - THEATER - WRITING

ARTBITS by Richard B. Harper


VOLUME 7 * * All Arts News On the Web * * September 18, 2003

STUFF YOU SHOULDN'T MISS

      ArtBits always features a calendar of the goings on of Franklin County artists. Check out these events around Franklin County. Each issue includes the entire text of our weekly newspaper column.


      Stop in for live music and more at the Fairfax Music Sessions at the Foothills Bakery in Fairfax most Saturday afternoons at 1 p.m., at ChowBella in St Albans 8-10 p.m. most Wednesday evenings, at the Kept Writer in St Albans most Friday and Saturday evenings, at the Bayside in St Albans Town most Sunday afternoons, and the Cambridge CoffeeHouses at 7 p.m. on the first and third Wednesday of every month.
     These gatherings bring new opportunities, gossip, "show-and-tell" and occasional workshops. The booked performances and acoustic Open Mike Nights feature music, readings, and more from the best new artists in Vermont.


A LIVELY WAY TO DRAW ON LIFE

      Chepe Cuadra, a California-born artist from Nicaragua via Spain and Colombia, will offer life drawing classes with a live model in his St. Albans home and studio starting this Sunday morning. The classes will focus on graphite on paper.
      "I [also] paint with earth," he said, "in all different colors of earth. In Colombia I had access to a huge variety of different colored earth." The earth is a source for very basic pigments, including red from iron oxide and yellow from ochre. Yellow ochre "is very natural and abundant all over the surface of the planet, and there is a whole variety of reds and greens and purples and whites and blacks. Here, I am trying to use the high contrasts like the blacks and browns."
      He washes the earth to collect the pigment and to remove the acidity. "Sometimes I use what I find in it like the vegetable fibers." He uses an epoxy base to attach the color solids to the canvas.
      "The epoxy respects the grain of the earth and doesn't become involved as another element unless I want it too." That is very different from painting with oil in which the oil itself is a big part of the media. "You can see and smell the oil. This is earth and it looks like earth and it is earth texture and it is the color of the earth not manipulated by any other materials."
      Mr. Cuadra attended art school in Barcelona, Spain, where he also received a specialized degree in art conservation of mural paintings and oil on canvas. This year, he has taught a spring semester course in life drawing at CCV-Burlington and has given summer lessons at Cynthia Pease Stratton's studio in Fairfax.
      Ms. Stratton teaches studio classes. "I wanted to be in a class where I didn't have to go down to Burlington," she said, "so it was in my mind that I was going to give some artists from Johnson lessons in exchange for some modeling." She had never intended to take on a teacher. "He is so passionate, so wonderful and energetic, I just didn't want to teach another class, I wanted to be a student in that class." Several of her artist friends and neighbors came "down Sunday mornings, grab a cup of coffee and draw for two hours."
      "I started with some second level students," at CCV Mr. Cuadra said. "We started from still life then we went to human figure, dressed and finally a nude model. What I see among the people I teach is that at the beginning [of the class] they are artists but throughout the exercise I provoke them to forget about what they know and start a new point of view into this subject and at the end they come out with their own personality in the drawings which are very different from other works they have been doing before."
      The artist forces his students to see what is not there. "That's how I start my classes," he said. "We're going to see what is not there and we're going to work on the negatives. There is some empty spaces between the figure so you create like a consciousness of the whole surroundings and the figure inside of the surroundings."
      The classes work very very fast with graphite on paper. It gives the full range of black from very light gray to deep black.
      Figure studies are often difficult for an artist. The students this summer "had been painters for many years, but they felt very weak about drawing the human figure." He sees no difference between the human body and other elements "because nature is reproduced in the human body and vice versa. There is no line like a sharp angle in nature and there is no sharp angle in human body. When you paint the face, you have to insinuate the back of the head. This is how I explain that you must paint what you do not see."
      Chepe Cuadra has an annual exhibit in the Bristol Bakery. "I usually bring pastels," he said. This year he will show oil pastels of sunsets and views from Lake Champlain that he created "very fast. The sun is setting and you have this variety of colors. It is like taking a picture." At ChowBella he has images in dry pastel on paper of the colonial city of Granada, Nicaragua "I painted the night light on the night architecture illuminated by the street lamps." He is also drawing portraits in graphite. He did twenty during the Art Hop in Burlington as well as exhibiting a painting of the face of a lady made with sand in 1984. "It was a crazy event, everybody goes crazy and wild. The more excited I get the more inspired I get."
      He will hold the classes on Sunday mornings from 10 a.m.-12 noon in his downtown St Albans home above the Colonial Styling Center, in "a big room where I could put a podium in the middle of the room" for the model. Call 527-3930 for reservations and information.


ON STAGE LIVE

ST. ALBANS--ChowBella presents the jazz of Matt Clancy, Eric Bushey, and Justin Bedell, next Wednesday, September 24, at 8-10 p.m. Call 524-1405 or Click here.


BOARD STUFF

      The Board of Directors of the All Arts Council will meet on Tuesday, September 23, at 7 p.m. in Northwestern Medical Center Conference Room 1. There are just three agenda items: committee assignments for the Board, the Executive Director search, and a membership drive.
      The public is welcome to attend. Please bring money and a desire to volunteer.


SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER ART DEADLINES

ARTISTS WHO WORK WITH THE HUMAN FIGURE (September 30)--Olin Fine Arts Center at Washington & Jefferson College wants all media except video and installations for a 2004 show. No entry fee. E-mail for info.

WORKS ON PAPER (October 10)--National Juried Exhibition at the South Shore Art Center in Cohasset MA. Cash awards. Entry fee. Click here for info.

PROJEKT30 (October 24)--An online forum run by artists, designed to market up-and-coming artists to over 4000 "real world" galleries wants submissions for a first-of-its-kind, new and experimental format of juried exhibition. There is a $500 best-in-show award and two $250 honorable mentions for all media except sound and video. Entry fee. Click here for info.

HANDCRAFTED ( October 27)--This juried exhibition of ceramics, fiber, glass, metal and wood offers cash prizes at the Rocky Mount Arts Center in North Carolina. Click here for info.


CLICK HERE: ART SITE OF THE WEEK

      Thought there were no jobs for artists? The ARLIS/NA JobNet lists vacancy announcements for art librarians, visual resources professionals, and related positions.


FRANKLIN COUNTY BOOKSHELF

      ArtBits features a quick weekly peek at the bookshelf or night stand of the folks you know in and around Franklin County. That popular feature has a page of its own at the Franklin County Bookshelf here on the AAC site.


SUPPORT LIVE ARTS IN YOUR TOWN!


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      This article was originally published in the St Albans Messenger and other traditional print media. It is Copyright © 2003 by Richard B. Harper. All rights reserved. Archival material is provided as-is. Links are not necessarily maintained (if a link in this article fails, try Google.com or your favorite search engine).
      Thanks to recent misuse of copyright material on the Internet by individuals and archival firms alike, we emphasize that your rights to this article are limited to viewing it and printing it for personal use only. You must receive explicit permission from the All Arts Council and the author before reprinting or redistributing this article in any medium.