Featured Artists!
Featured Artists for Panoply 2010 are:
Michael Banks—A Southern folk artist working in tar art, Michael was born in 1972 and raised by his mother in northern Alabama. From a very early age, he showed considerable artistic talent, drawing and painting with whatever materials he could find. Blossoming under his mother’s encouragement to persevere and use his talent to do great things, Michael painted and created until 1992 when his mother died. Grief stricken, he would stop painting completely for five years, but ultimately the memory of his mother’s encouragement would bring Michael through those long years of depression and in 1997 he began to paint again and heal in the process. Michael works very quickly, often with his fingers, within a lively color palette, continually developing his abstract and expressionistic style.
Deona Fish—Deona’s “Sleepy Little Dreams” are paintings that open a doorway into a nostalgic world where whim and simplicity guide you into feelings and memories still lingering from childhood. Her characters are expressions of the innocence inherent in all beings, the common thread we share with all life. It is wonderfully obvious that her source of inspiration was the preschool and kindergarten children she taught, along with her two-year-old son. Her paintings embody their innate sense of creativity but with a calm tone and muted color cultivated by her time with nature and in her little cabin on the side of a hill in Leicester, NC.
Over the past three years, Deona has been traveling the southeast attending outsider and folk art festivals. The exposure to such amazing artists and kind people has spurred a growth in her work. She is currently displaying her work at Atelier 24 Lexington and Woolworth Walk Gallery in Asheville, NC; the Winder Binder Gallery of Folk Art in Chattanooga, TN; and the Blue Magnolia in Augusta, GA.
Public FA
Emerging Artists Tent
Returning for Panoply 2010 is the Public FA Emerging Artist Tent, presenting up-and-coming artists to festival patrons. Visual artists between the ages of 17 and 27 (or artists of any age currently enrolled in a studio art course at the college level) and who have never had a gallery contract are eligible to participate.
Emerging Artist Committee Chairs will select the art for this great start to these artists’ careers. You may call (256) 519-2787 (ARTS) for more information, and/or you may download an application here.
Art Educators!
Also back for Panoply 2010 is the Art Educators’ Program. The Art Educator’s Tent will be used to showcase and sell the work of artists who have actively taught art classes in public/private elementary and secondary schools or colleges/universities prior to April 2010. The Art Educators’ Committee Chair will select the artwork for this show. You may call (256) 519-2787 (ARTS) for more information, and/or you may download an application here.
One Merit Award, along with a $200 (two-hundred-dollar) honorarium, will be presented by the official Art Marketplace Judge to one deserving artist from both the Emerging Artist and Art Educators’ programs.
Each piece chosen for the tents will be available for sale to the public at a price determined by the artist. A percentage of each sale will be retained by The Arts Council to help fund Arts Education programs conducted throughout the year. These venues provide another viewing and purchasing opportunity for festivalgoers!
As a “Panoply Preview,” the selected artists’ works will be on display at the art@TAC Gallery in the halls of the Von Braun Center.
For further information on Panoply and The Arts Council’s galleries, call (256) 519-2787 (ARTS), ext. 206.