The Exchange Gallery

Every month VAE highlights the work of four or five exemplary VAE artists in its Exchange Gallery. This highly visible retail space in the front windows of VAE's City Market Gallery is excellent exposure for artists and a favorite shopping spot of patrons. Artists are juried into the space annually. For more information contact Meredith Burgess at 919.828.7834 ex 6853, or meredith@visualartexchange.org.

Click here to learn how to apply for your own featured artist exhibition!

July 2010 Exchange Gallery Artists:

• Jeanne Bessette
• Elke Brand
• Ann Flaherty
• Steve Staresina

Jeanne Bessette

I never start a painting without having a message in mind. It would feel too trite, even if it's just a word that motivates me to move the brush and push color around. Although admittedly, I need little reason to do either. Painting is what helps me find peace with myself and the world I live in. It answers a lot of questions and sometimes brings up new ones. Painting often feels like a therapy session. At the end of a day in the studio I often feel like I got something off my chest. It is often my voice. I'm mostly interested in the essence of things rather than replicating something I'm seeing on canvas which is why I paint in an abstract way. I like to paint the way a landscape makes me feel or I will explore an emotion.

I love to layer and glaze and scratch and draw. I really do play on the canvas. I love the way paint feels all oozy and soft. I paint with my fingers, sponges, and I scrape with sharp objects. Sometimes I even use a brush. I seldom see the final result in my mind but I do have a vague sense of where I want to go. I often let some paint dry and scratch through to the underneath. I work toward staying present and keeping my thoughts out of the way. I would consider my approach to be intuitive rather than methodical. I work on several paintings at once so as not to become too robotic and I always try to stop painting before I take a painting so far that I lose the looseness.

I love lots and lots of color and contrast but have learned through the years that sometimes the most subtle changes in a painting can be the most powerful.

My intention is to relate, somehow, to each and every person something they did not think of before in a new way. At least that's the goal.

Painting for me is not an occupation it's a preoccupation, I self medicate with paint.

Elke Brand

Photography was always a big part of my life. I started out with black and white photography, and about 10 years ago my passion shifted to the digital world with it's endless possibilities.

I create new digital images by combining numerous of my photographs. My work is a digital collage of real life images changed into something new with a twist on reality.

We all share the same planet, but at the same time we all live on our own. Each of them is unique with it's different locations, personal preferences, and people. With each of my creations I visualize a personal space in a new universe.

Ann Flaherty

Materials and mediums...materials and mediums....There are so many options, what to work with, what to try, what will best illustrate the statement I am making? What if that statement is right here, created from what I already have on hand, and ready to be shared?

These art quilts are created from materials I had on hand, some hand dyed fabrics, some commercial fabrics; some synthetic papers normally sent out with the trash. Paints and threads enhance the color. A heat gun manipulates the textures.

Something meaningful is created from cast-offs.

Steve Staresina

Steve Staresina uses a modification of the ancient technique and natural medium called fresco, creating luminous and vibrant paintings in layers of marble and limestone plaster. He is one of just a few artists in the world using fresco in the expressionist/modernist style, utilizing sustainable and re-claimed products in his frescoes.

Composed with a mastery of color and line, each of his modernist frescoes gives rise to multiple layers that reveal the organic richness of the materials as they combine with the artist's vision. In his works, the artist portrays life, courage and beauty in an experience where the artist, the art and the viewer visually interact. As a fresco artist and artisan, Steve's love of natural materials combines with his passion for modern and expressionist art, creating his richly distinct style. In Staresina's work, there exists a paradox between an ancient art medium and his new palette, invoking a modernist edge and emotion. The goal in Staresina paintings is in manifesting a message of beauty and excellence through fresco, a medium of the ancients, to create the exquisite contemporary and emotion filled works of "our day."

See previous featured artists:

June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007