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!

September 2009 Exchange Gallery Artists:

• Dawn Behling
• Natalie Crawford
• Jenny Eggleston
• Julie Niskanen
• Alison Flegel Peedin

Dawn Behling

My primary artistic focus is 2D mixed-media. I use screen printing in my work for the instant, repetitive results that it gives. However, I use screen printing in a painterly way, rather than the more traditional, graphic style for which it is known. My process involves building layers of screen print, paint, and papers in an improvisational manner, so the end result has visual depth and interest. My background is in surface design, so the use of surface texture, layering, and color is apparent in my current works on paper and canvas. Patterns and textures in nature are a major influence in my work.

In this particular series, I play hide and seek with the shell image and other organic patterns, each piece serving as an inspiration for the next piece. It is as if the shell is some ancient fossil that has been unearthed on an archaeological dig. However, it is through the process of building up and layering the surface, rather than removing the surface, that the image is "discovered".

Natalie Crawford

Natalie Crawford focuses on forms in nature, and attempts to portray the emotions and feelings derived from it. Crawford works in collage, acrylic, colored pencil, and charcoal. Landscapes are Crawford's primary subject matter, although her work is becoming increasingly abstract.

Jenny Eggleston

I try not to plan a drawing, only to respond to a basic mood, to explore. I quiet my mind and let the pencil rest and watch what starts to emerge. I find myself repeatedly drawing ovoid shapes as stones, eggs, fruit, seeds. Rather than being realistic portrayals of natural objects, the drawings are unburdened by reality yet inspired by things seen, heard and felt by the senses.

Lately I have been especially inspired by the fig: a symbol of fertility and sexuality and paradise. Its fruit is actually its flower, an outside-in, inside-out paradox that bends our perception of reality in a literally sweet and wonderful way.

Some drawings appear dark, moody, mystical and sexual. They are like the inside of a fig, resting places for creation...what is expected is not there. My drawings are insides turned out and the outside in; veins and flesh appear with seeds and fur, figs hang on spider webs.

With figs fertilizing my subconscious, and my drawings sprouting figs, my poetry started growing figs as well. Figure that out.

Julie Niskanen

The natural forms that permeate our world too often become background patterns in our hectic lives. For the most part, people no longer feel the wonder of the complexities and intricacies seen in forms such as a single seedpod. All too often one walks by a scene or object without noticing it. What happens when we slow down to truly notice and examine what is around us? Examining these organic forms allows me to reflect on the human disregard for so many things, while also reflecting on and bringing forth these rhythms of nature that are often unnoticed in our lives. I focus on the beauty I find within these natural forms. I work to bring attention and give power to the subtle changes and cycles in nature, as meaning can be found in the smallest things.

The printmaking processes I use give me an invaluable vocabulary of marks that feeds my thoughts and work. Through using mezzotint and various etching techniques, I am able to achieve a wide range of tones and textures to complement the images and ideas.

Alison Flegel Peedin

Creating pottery is how I relax and quiet my mind. It is as if I am centering myself when I sit down at the wheel to center the clay. The idea of a perfect form to me is achieved through balanced movement in my pieces, either through the forms themselves or by the application of the glazes on the surface. My challenge when making functional pieces is to make them seem like an extension of the person's body. The way a pot feels is just as important as how it looks. By the time a piece has made it to you the viewer, I have made sure that it will produce a grounding and calming feeling and that it is visually uplifting. Ultimately my goal is to create a unique energy in my pottery through exploration and experimentation with clay body, form and glazes that will positively stimulate the viewer both visually and tactilely.

See previous featured artists:

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