Greenhill announces the exhibition Following Threads:
Fiber Art and Drawing on display from Sept. 19-Nov. 9.
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Becky Joye, Lantern, 2010, acrylic
and pencil on paper, 30 x 22 inches
©Becky Joye, Courtesy Greenhill
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"Following Threads highlights four artists, Harriet Hoover, Becky Joye, Leigh Suggs, and Jason Watson, who investigate the drawn and stitched line in figurative and abstract works that stretch the definitions of drawing. Hoover, Joye, Suggs and Watson all have artistic practices that embrace several mediums, producing studio drawings as well as works utilizing fiber, collage, hand and machine sewing, and installation. Thematic threads link their graphic and fiber work as well as their multidisciplinary approaches which explore personal narrative spaces.
Line, Touch, Trace, an exhibition presenting 13 North Carolina artists focusing on draftsmanship curated by Edie Carpenter, was developed concurrently with Following Threads and is on view at the North Carolina Museum of Art from August 31, 2014 through March 4, 2015.
Harriet Hoover’s works combining several media are informed by the artist’s desire “to uncover stories of a place and its history.” In Following Threads Hoover associates drawing and collage in a new group of works that may be viewed from two sides, including large-scale floor to ceiling collages. Hoover’s assemblages, like her 2-d works, are composed from found materials and often bear the names of the places where the artist gathered them. These cast-off remnants are “manipulated, stitched and bound” by the artist in free-standing sculptural pieces that possess a strong material presence and poetic resonance. Greensboro-based artist Harriet Hoover has attended the Penland School of Crafts and studied landscape architecture at The Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. She holds a bachelor’s degree in textile technology and fiber arts focus from NC State University and a MFA from UNC-Greensboro. She currently teaches at NC A & T State University. Recent exhibition venues include LIGHT, Art and Design in Chapel Hill, Art in Odd Places in Greensboro, and the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro.
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Harriet Hoover, Sporting with an Overturned Cart,
2014, paper, gouache, Sumi ink, 54 x 38 inches©Harriet Hoover, Courtesy Greenhill
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Becky Joye’s acrylic and pencil drawings on paper depict imaginary structures resembling farm silos, communication towers, or fairgrounds. Nostalgic machine-age constructions are depicted with precisionist line. Ductwork and pylons are often festooned with floating kite-like appendages in bright colors evoking aerial circuses and dreams of flight. At Greenhill Joye will present a new group of larger drawings on paper inspired by “industrial winding towers and vintage toys” from a recent trip to Germany. These works on paper will be seen in association with the artist’s machine-sewn fabric collages in vivid patterns and new three-dimensional works. Charlotte native Becky Joye graduated from the UNC-Charlotte with a Bachelor of Architecture in 2003. She is currently a member artist at Artspace in Raleigh after being a Regional Emerging Artist-in-Residence in 2013. She recently was in the exhibition Thought Maps & Ladders with artist Ray at Artspace. Her work has been featured in numerous exhibitions, including The Drawing Show, Pump Project, Austin, TX; a solo exhibition at Designbox, Raleigh; Unraveled at the Block Gallery in Raleigh and Contemporary South at the Visual Arts Exchange in Raleigh. She was a 2014 Artfields finalist, in Lake City, South Carolina.
Leigh Suggs produces painstakingly crafted works involving “the use of singular pattern producing gestures such as weaving, wrapping, stitching, and adhering.” Ink pen line drawings in geometric patterns form polyhedrons and subtle variations in the flow of ink create pulsating effects of light line against a dark ground. In some of Suggs most well-known works, hundreds of petal shaped paper elements of are stitched in concentric circles, overlapping petals varying in opacity and density forming large circular wall constructions. Seen together Suggs’ works reveal a practice both precise and obsessive, in which light as much as line is enlisted by the artist to produce subtle shifts in reading and evoke organic as well as celestial metaphors. Leigh Suggs is currently an MFA candidate at Virginia Commonwealth University and holds a BFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Leigh is a recent recipient of the NC Arts Council Fellowship Grant and has shown her work at LIGHT, Art and Design in Chapel Hill, the Weatherspoon Museum, and the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh.
Jason Watson is a mixed-media artist, whose work combines interests in the figure, found objects, and text fragments as visual material. Watson’s drawings and collages are visual assemblages of remnants of our collective cultural past. Starting with historic statues and portrait busts sketched in museums or at historical monuments, his works serve as storybook-like illustrations providing a pictorial space for various cultural artifacts to inhabit. The artist’s interest in the object is pushed to the extreme in new works combining drawing, stitching and assemblage. Watson has exhibited in galleries, universities and non-profit spaces including in Drawing Revisited at Greenhill in 2010 and Jason Watson: A Second Look, at the Jersey City Museum in 2007-2008. Watson recently completed an artist residency at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte, NC where he was the Wesley Mancini Artist in Residence for 2013.
Associated Programs and Events
· Public Opening: Friday, September 19 | 5:30-8:30 pm
Between 5:30 – 6:30 pm Greenhill Members are invited to hear Curator Edie Carpenter’s comments in The Gallery. At 6:30 pm The Gallery opens to the public. Cash Bar and light hors d'oeuvres provided by The Fresh Market.
· First Friday: October 3, 6-9 pm: Live music at 6:30 pm by Farewell Friend
· Artist Talk: Wednesday, October 15, 2014, 5:30 – 7:00 pm
Presentations by Leigh Suggs and Jason Watson where they will discuss the themes, intentions, and material processes employed in their artworks.
· Artist Talk: Wednesday, October 29, 2014, 5:30 – 7:00 pm
Presentations by Harriet Hoover and Becky Joye where they will discuss the themes, intentions, and material processes employed in their artworks.
· First Friday: November 7, 6-9 pm, Live music at 6:30 pm the Triangle Improvisation Collective
About Greenhill
The mission of Greenhill is to promote the visual arts of North Carolina by engaging a broad community of artists, adults and children through dynamic exhibitions and educational programs and providing a platform for exploration and investment in art. Greenhill is the only non-collecting organization dedicated to presenting, promoting and advocating for contemporary visual art and artists of NC. Since its founding in 1974, the organization has presented and sold artwork of over 9,850 visual artists and engaged nearly one million visitors through free access to The Gallery, The Shop & ArtQuest, the award-winning education program for children & families. Greenhill is located in downtown Greensboro in the Greensboro Cultural Center.
www.greenhillnc.org"
A Press Release
