On September 23rd, 2015 the Visual Arts Alliance held the opening reception and awards ceremony for the 33rd Juried Membership Exhibition at 1600 Smith in downtown Houston. This exhibition was open to all current VAA members and was juried by the notable Gus Kopriva, owner of Redbud Gallery in Houston.
From the 457 submissions from 126 member artists Kopriva selected 65 works by 66 artists that will be on display at 1600 Smith Street through Saturday, November 22, 2015.
I was delighted to have my recent piece “Winter – Take It Away Kid” selected as one of those 65 works. It is one of many I am producing for my upcoming solo exhibition in February at Archway Gallery utilizing 3D-printed material incorporated into the artwork.
A stark tree image buried under many layers of encaustic rises and enlarges, with the final iteration being a large 3D-printed rendering emerging off the surface of the encaustic.
You may recognize this as a progression of my “Song of the whippoorwill” encaustic that was in the Lawndale Big Show last year. It also incorporates a bit of my “Maestro if you please” piece with the music score.
As a whole it depicts a memory of my sitting in the back of my high school orchestra in the percussion section, watching idly as the strings rehearsed a movement from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” – a piece that really inspired me to take up the violin.
The music score is the opening violin solo from Vivaldi’s Winter movement of The Four Seasons. Mari Samuelsen performs it at the 0:44 mark: