PRESS RELEASE
JRB Art at The Elms Presents
“Truckload of Art”
An abundance of paintings, sculptures, glass, encaustics, ceramics, bronzes, common metals, and found objects are on their way from the Land of Enchantment to the Sooner State. In short: THE TRUCKLOAD OF ART exhibition is coming to Oklahoma City and will be available for viewing on Friday, October 5th at JRB ART at The Elms in the Paseo Arts District.
Artist Elizabeth Hahn, a former Santa Fe Gallery Owner who received her MFA from the University of Oklahoma has been scouring the mesas and plains of New Mexico to select eight talented and accomplished artists for a show she has curated featuring Terry Baker, Michael Freed, Caroline Farris, Geoffrey Gorman, Max Lehman, Charlie Miner, and SallyAnn Milam Paschall. Hahn’s work will also be featured.
Terry Baker’s blown-glass career began in February 2001 while working with owner Charlie Miner and other artists at Tesuque Glassworks in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Art and music―always a big part of Terry’s life―led him to experiment with many different mediums, from sculpting to graphics and graffiti… but no medium entranced him like glass. Terry loves the sense of urgency inherent in handling a material so fluid. It not only records your every movement, but every hesitation as well. Time for pausing and reflecting on a piece in progress is virtually non-existent. As Terry puts it, “You can’t stop until the piece is either in the annealer (oven) or the trash bin.”
Michael Freed is an artist living in Santa Fe, NM, since 1995. A native Oklahoman, he attended the University of Oklahoma, graduating with a BA in Journalism and a BFA in painting. Working in a variety of media that includes charcoal, mixed media, and sculpture, his works range from representational figurative subject matter to large outdoor sculpture forms. The overarching thread through his diverse body of work, is an exploration of contemporary male identity and concepts of masculinity attached to that.
Caroline Farris was born in Lindsay, Oklahoma. Caroline was an accomplished self-taught representational artist before ever receiving any formal education. After her children were older, she began her formal college education at Oklahoma City Community College and ended it after receiving her MFA degree from the University of Oklahoma. In 1987, she started 25 year rewarding teaching career, at OCCC. The paintings she is creating today incorporate a multitude of working techniques, including translucent and opaque layering, collage, fine and rough carving, constructing and destructing, spontaneity and chance. The reflective quality of the metallic paint and the interference pigments layered and manipulated on a heavily textured canvas create a luminescent lushness to her paintings, which she refers to as her, “Jewels of Nature.”
Geoffrey Gorman grew up on an old plantation in the country outside of Baltimore, MD. Going to a variety of art colleges eventually led Geoffrey into designing and building contemporary furniture. From there he became a gallery dealer, curated shows, and was an art consultant and coach for artists before becoming a full time artist. Geoffrey is currently a practicing artist, creating his original found material sculptures in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He shows his work around the United States and had also exhibited in China and South Korea. With his extensive background in the arts, he brings a unique, humorous and fresh perspective on the world of artists, galleries and the business of art.
Max Lehman was born in Fort Knox, KY, and grew up in Phoenix, AZ. Lehman lived in New Mexico for 26 years and currently lives in the village of Nambé. Lehman attended college at Arizona State University, majoring in Digital Media Arts while also studying Pre-Columbian Art History. He apprenticed at the F&R Pottery Studio and worked for the Red Horse Clay Company. Max’s primary connection with Hispanic culture comes from being one of the first Anglo artists elected to be a part of an NEA funded Hispanic Art Collective. Max was a member of the Movimiento Artistico Del Rio Salado. Staying true to his urban roots, Max’s work focuses on painted ceramics with applied influence from graffiti and punk rock, sometimes incorporating neon tube lighting and draws upon iconography from the Maya, Aztec, Teotihuacán and South American pre-Columbian cultures.
In creating delicate cast-glass open vessels imprinted with highly detailed natural forms, Charlie Miner employs a complex system of lost wax casting informed by his considerable background in bronze. The process of creating a single piece may take upwards of three months. Educated at Pilchuk Glass School, Miner founded Tesuque Glassworks in 1975. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Corning Glass Museum, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the New Mexico Museum of Art, and the Tucson Museum of Art.
Sallyann Milam Paschall’s work as an artist began with a fascination with patterns and colors. This grew to include an exploration of elegant marks on paper and canvas. College found her working towards a BFA at the University of Oklahoma with a painting major and a sculpture minor. While at OU she studied printmaking with the noted Mexican artist Emilio Amero. Paschall eventually was awarded degrees in art, anthropology and geology, following lifelong interests in these subjects. She obtained a Masters in Studio Art with a focus on painting and ceramic sculpture and a Masters of Science in structural geology. After working with NASA at a New Mexico laboratory, she relocated to central Colorado, where her family has owned property since the 1920’s, then finally to a more permanent home in Santa Fe, NM. The colors of New Mexico and the high Chihuahuan Desert creep into my artwork. Paschall states, “Patterns and marks and subtle happenings are the driver in my non objective work. As both a scientist and an artist, when the two sides of my brain work together I can feel it. And the magic happens.”