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 Rachel Berry at 919.828.7834 ex 6854, or rberry@visualartexchange.org.

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

The Exchange Gallery is brought to you by The Allen Tate Company.

November 2008 Exchange Gallery Artists:

• Ryan Cummings
• Carley Dergins
• Mary Kay Kennedy
• M. Blair Ligon
• Kitty Mecham

Ryan Cummings

Based on photos and sketches from the Boylan St. bridge this portrait of the Downtown skyline includes a collection of vintage photos of people who have occupied our city at different points in time over the last 75 years. Workers, kids, sometimes parts of buildings populate this painting just as they populated the town over the years, just as we do now. As Raleigh continues to grow at a rapid rate it inspires me to record its changes and capture some of its favorite spots before they change forever.

Carley Dergins

One of my most basic observations exploring and working with different material is finding out the way individual materials breakdown, decompose, melt, bleed, fade or wear over time. What can I do with a shape that is fleeting? I am interested in entropic form as best described by Yve-Alain Bois:

The entropic, simulacral move, however, is to float the field of seeing in the absence of the subject, a form that creates the illusion that it is nothing except the fact that "I am seeing" [it] *

If coffee drips onto a sheet of paper, it will bleed and change form until settling and becoming dry. A form once in motion becomes something more permanent. As a stain dries, its life is recorded. Its shape holds a kind of presence. It is this presence that this body of work originates, sparking a dialog between the canvas and myself. My work seeks to archive moments of impermanence through the exploration of texture, form and material. I repetitively drip, trace, cut splatter, smudge, print or draw. My hand is guided without a pre-existing idea. Seemingly insignificant acts become substantial occurrences through this tension created.

*Bois, Yve-Alain and Rosalind Krauss. "A User's Guide to Entropy." October, Fall 1996, pp. 39-88. 1996.

Mary Kay Kennedy

Many people believe that photographs tell the truth; I believe that photographs lie. The photographer allows the viewer to see only what the photographer wants, eliminating the seconds before and after, omitting everything outside the frame that they do not want you to see, creating a deception. The mark of a great photograph is one that leaves the viewer believing that what is in front of their eyes is the only thing that was there; they do not need or want to see beyond the edges of the frame.



M. Blair Ligon

Computer painting carries with it a certain ethos, baggage and expectations - that it is a cool, rarefied, and mathematical artform or a vulgar tool of the popular mass media. I do not directly seek to overcome this mind-set or change the viewer's attitude toward the artform, instead I seek to change the viewer's attitude toward the subject matter by exploiting their preconceptions about what computer art should be. I want the viewer to go beyond his or her past prejudices. We build up walls against that kind of experience; it is a reality of modern life that we are bombarded with images of brutality and unfairness and that we routinely ignore them. Images of nature or people within a novel computer arts environment can carry messages that the audience normally filters out. It is, in this way, subversive.

This activity of reaching for the heart with a computer has a most welcome side effect - preconceptions about the nature of working within its strengths and limitations may also change. A new door opens for possibilities of beauty, awareness and uplifting of the spirit as the medium becomes transparent and the artwork is only itself.

Kitty Mecham

Through the use of the human form I hope to convey the triumph and tragedy that is a part of all cultures and countries and each piece that I create comes from within as I combine the sexual, military, religious, and socio-economic battles that encompass the human form. I use sculpture to depict the human need for sensual input, within both the visual and tactile dimension; a tool to draw people to the meaning and objective of the work - to awaken people to the conflicts of life and ultimately help to portray the universal nature of human life. Each of us experiences events throughout our lives that play a major role in the development of who we are as an individual. However, common symbols, stories, or actions remind us that we are not substantially different than the person standing next to us.

See previous featured artists:

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