Women Painting Women/On Expedition in Charleston, SC!

The South Carolina WPW trip - part deux!

The WPW crew being HARDCORE! Painting at 9am the morning of the opening reception for the show

So even in the midst of the excitement surrounding the "Women Painting Women" show at Robert Lange Studios, 12 of us painters decided we were going to take a week and paint like crazy. Paint paint paint! It was a blast - we went in on a rental house on Sullivan's Island, just across the way from Charleston, SC, and planned a week of plein air painting and painting from the model at a variety of locations, including Magnolia Cemetery, Magnolia Plantation, the marshes at Shem Creek, various marshes around Sullivan's Island and the Isle of Palms, downtown Charleston, and the home of the lovely and amazing Charleston painter and WPW show participant Shannon Runquist. Phew - that's a lot of painting!

The whole group painting from the model

Rachel Constantine and Katherine Stone painting at Magnolia Plantation

Sadie Valeri's painting and setup in downtown Charleston, in Philadelphia Alley

Sadie Valeri and her painting at Magnolia Cemetery

Alia El-Bermani and her painting at Magnolia Cemetery

A whole group of us painting at the home of Charleston artist Shannon Runquist

Catherine Prescott painting in Magnolia Cemetery

Painting at the house on Sullivan's Island

Cindy Procious' sweet painting setup on the beach at Sullivan's Island

Beach painting - Sullivan's Island

Stefani Tewes and her painting

Linda even found volunteer models amongst the others in the house...

Linda Brandon drawing Alia El-Bermani

Linda's sketch of me - done in about 45 minutes!!

As the week progressed, the number of paintings stacked up, and we overflowed the original designated drying area for paintings... art everywhere!! So fun and interesting to see everyone's work as we tackled the landscape and figure in different locations and different times of day...

paintings...

more paintings...

 yet more paintings...

whoa yes, more paintings... 

So! Many! Paintings!



In addition to all the painting we had planned for ourselves, a group of us also signed on for the Charleston Fine Art Dealers' Association's (CFADA) Painting in the Park event at Washington Park in downtown Charleston at 9am that first very chilly Saturday morning!! We bundled ourselves up and painted our fingers off (nearly literally - it was cold!) and made paintings to be auctioned off that evening to benefit Charleston public school system high school art programs.

 Me and my painting of St. Michael's Episcopal church's steeple at the "four corners of law" in downtown Charleston

My painting, all framed up and ready for the auction...

Mia Bergeron painting artist Stanka Kordic in Washington Park

Linda Tracey Brandon painting artist Stanka Kordic in Washington Park

But lest you think, dear reader, that this whole week was all work and no play, please know that there was MUCH fun to be had at the WPW house... and much great food to be eaten!! Between group dinners at the house, side trips to art shows and generous hosting (including a magnificent oyster roast) at the hands of Shannon Runquist, the WPW crew were well-fed both nutritionally and spiritually by great food, conversation and art (though possibly not well-rested - it was a very busy and exciting week!)

 Oyster roast!!! Thanks to Shannon Runquist for her incredible hospitality!!!

Linda Tracey Brandon, Alexandra Tyng and Terry Strickland at the home of Shannon Runquist

Alia El-Bermani shucking oysters at Shannon Runquist's

Rachel Constantine making an amazing brownie cake for Cindy Procious' birthday



We were also fortunate to be in a great town with tons of great art - so we eagerly took advantage of opportunities to check out other shows in town, including the amazing Mary Whyte watercolors at Coleman Fine Art:

Artist Mario Robinson with his work at Ann Long Fine Art

Mia Bergeron admiring work by Robert Liberace at M Gallery



A ton of talent here: l-r, artists Stanka Kordic, Mario Robinson, Mark Kelvin Horton and Shannon Runquist at Horton Hayes Fine Art

What an amazing week - one of the best I've experienced in a long time! Great company, great talent, completely inspiring and amazing group of people. I want to go back!

 Alexandra Tyng and Catherine Prescott

Alex Tyng, Terry Strickland, Mia Bergeron, Alia El-Bermani, Cindy Procious, Linda Brandon

Kate Stone and Alia El-Bermani

Linda Brandon and Mia Bergeron

I love these guys!

  

What an amazing trip!! Sigh.

P.S. You can read my fellow WPW on expedition participants' blog entries as well - they've been gathered at the following link:

http://womenpaintingwomen.blogspot.com/p/on-expedition.html

Women Painting Women/Robert Lange Studios in Charleston, SC!

Wow. How to cover the events of the last week and a half? I don’t have a sufficient supply of adjectives to describe the whole experience – I’ve just been saying “amazing” and “awesome” so frequently of late that I kind of want to slap myself. Most of all, though, I just feel super-duper lucky to have spent time in a gorgeous city, as part of work in a gorgeous show at a gorgeous gallery and to paint for a week with 11 gorgeous, talented and wickedly fun fellow painters.

I think in order to wrap my head around the entirety of the experience of the last 1 ½ weeks, I’ll have to start with the “Women Painting Women” group exhibition at Robert Lange Studios in Charleston and then in a future post I’ll have to address the subsequent “Women Painting Women” painting expedition wherein a sub-set of 12 of us artists who went in on a week-long beach house rental on Sullivan’s Island and painted up a storm. So, without further ado…

What a show!!!

50+ female figurative artists, all with incredible skills, all bringing their unique spin on the depiction of the female figure. There were so many amazing works, it would be hard to point to any one to call it my favorite… and as a bonus, many of the artists were able to make it in for the show – from California, from Illinois, from Ohio, from Arizona, from Oklahoma! We even had the work of some international artists – Scotland, the Netherlands, Italy, Sweden were all represented with some truly beautiful work.

It was a sort of dream come true for the three of us who have contributed to the “Women Painting Women” blog, posting stellar figurative works by outstanding female artists in the hopes that somewhere out there in the virtual world, *someone* was taking notice of all of these talented (but often under-recognized) artists out there around the globe. This exhibition and the buzz which surrounded the exhibition mounted by Robert Lange Studios were really incredible validation of the need for exposure for all of this amazing talent. Here is a link to some of the great press the show has received, due to the efforts of Robert Lange Studios and fellow WPW founder Alia El-Bermani:
http://womenpaintingwomen.blogspot.com/p/press.html

Artists Stanka Kordic (at left) and Shannon Runquist (center)



The gallery has a great record of photos of opening night, which was PACKED. They wisely planned the whole event to coincide with the Charleston Fine Art Dealers' Association’s Annual “Fine Art Weekend” event, so the visual art scene in the city was definitely sizzling and crackling with energy (picture a strip of bacon here. I mean that in the most delicious way possible). The visiting artists in the show were warmly greeted not only by surprising numbers of art lovers in Charleston, but also by the wonderful and extremely talented artists represented by Robert Lange Studios... you can see a list of them at this link.

l-r: Cindy Procious, Rachel Constantine, Mia Bergeron, Linda Tracey Brandon, Sadie Valeri, and Kerry Brooks

I’m going to leave you with some photos of the artists with their work… it was such an enormous exhibit – really, museum-scale – that it’s difficult to record it in its entirety. Robert Lange Studios did post this video walk-through which is a rough approximation of the live experience, though.

Click here for a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SaCwrXEAKM

And here are some of the artists with their paintings:

Alexandra Tyng

Alia El-Bermani

Catherine Prescott

Cindy Procious

l-r: Katherine Stone, Diane Feissel, and Rachel Constantine

Linda Tracey Brandon

Mia Bergeron

Rachel Constantine

Sadie Valeri

Stanka Kordic

Stefani Tewes

Terry Strickland

More soon on the painting expedition on Sullivan's Island... 12 painters? 1 house? No problem!

Doing the Charleston.

Most of my energy over the past week or so has been turned toward getting ready for the Women Painting Women exhibition and painting retreat this week and next in Charleston, South Carolina. The show - which features 50 women painters working figuratively - promises to be an amazing event! And I'm really looking forward to a week of painting the South Carolina landscape with 11 other of my fellow artists.The weekend before last, fellow painter and "Women Painting Women" contributor Alia El-Bermani and I had a sneak peek at some of the works in the show as we travelled down to Charleston to drop off our work (and that of fellow exhibition artist and Philadelphia painter Abby Heller-Burnham). Only a small fraction of the works in the show were there in the gallery and uncrated - but already we could tell it's going to be one hell of a great show!! Here's a sneak peek (and more at this link):



I'd like to give a shout-out to Charleston artist Shannon Runquist for her kindness and hospitality in showing Alia and I around the area, so that we might have an idea of what spots we'd like to paint in the coming week. Also, Charleston artist Hilarie Lambert is kindly hosting several of the artists coming into town for the opening reception on Friday, November 5. They're the living example of Southern hospitality!



More updates will come over the next week and a half - expect lots of photos to be posted here and on "Women Painting Women." Of course there has also been much press about the exhibition, which can be found at this link. And for a great interview about the work of one of the artists taking part in the exhibition, Alia El-Bermani, please listen to the interview she gave on the radio show "Triad Arts Up Close" in conjunction with a show at the Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art. It's a great interview, and Alia is excellent at articulating her intent in her work; she also speaks specifically about one of the paintings which is on exhibit in the "Women Painting Women" exhibition, entitled Simbi (see below) - it's definitely worth a listen.

Simbi, oil on canvas, 2007, 28"x22", by Alia El-Bermani.



Stay tuned!

Frankly, Mr. Shanks.

Hey, how did I miss this feature in Friday Arts on WHYY about Studio Incamminati? Duh! Check it out!

Watch the full episode. See more Friday Arts.

More can be found at this link.
There's also a little extra video about Nelson Shanks' portrait of Princess Diana at this link.