Here are Alabama’s student winners of the 2018 Congressional Art Competition
Every spring since 1982, members of the United States House of Representatives have sponsored a high school arts competition in their respective districts to encourage and recognize the artistic talents of young constituents. Since then, over 650,000 high school students have participated in this nationwide competition. Each member of the Alabama delegation held a competition in their respective districts this spring to determine a winner. The winning artwork from each district will be displayed prominently in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. for one year, and the artist will receive two round-trip tickets to Washington, D.C. for the awards ceremony. Here are Alabama’s student winners for 2018: 1st District Katie Albrecht St. Paul’s Episcopal School in Mobile, Ala. | Senior “Tunnel Vision” “Each year, the Congressional Art Competition gives us an opportunity to showcase the outstanding talent of the student artists from Southwest Alabama. I am always impressed with the caliber of skill our young students display, and this year’s winner is no exception,” said Alabama 1st District U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne. “I especially want to congratulate Katie Albrecht on winning this year’s Congressional Art Competition. As I walk through the Capitol each day, I look forward to seeing her artwork proudly representing Alabama.” 2nd District Christine Choi Saint James School | Junior “Silly” was created using linoleum prints with varying values of ink. “We have so many talented students throughout our district, and I am thrilled to congratulate Christine for this outstanding achievement,” Alabama 2nd District U.S. Rep. Martha Roby said. “The annual Congressional Art Competition celebrates the importance of art and provides a great opportunity for students in our community to showcase their talents. I am pleased to join Christine’s family and friends in recognizing this fantastic honor, and I look forward to seeing her work displayed in the United States Capitol.” 3rd District Ragan Floyd Smiths Station High School | Junior “Russ,” which was created from torn paper. 4th District Brenda Sanchez Guntersville High School 5th District Jessica Morrow Brewer High School | Junior “Child of Africa” using graphite 6th District Grace Varner Hoover High School “Brother” — is a portrait of her brother with a map overlay drawing in graphite. “Each year I am impressed by the creative talents of the young people in Alabama’s Sixth District,” said Alabama 6th District U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer. “I would like to congratulate Grace Varner on winning the competition this year and I look forward to seeing her in DC this June for the National Art Reception.” 7th District Destinye Jones Aliceville High School | Senior “This year we had an amazing group of students participate in our Annual Congressional Art Competition including, honorable mention recipients, Zavian Dulaney and Yessenia Garcia, from Jefferson Davis High School, as well as, second place winner Rasyln Greene of Hale County College & Career Academy,” Alabama 7th District U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell said. “These students did an incredible job of capturing the theme of the 2018 competition, ‘An Artistic Discovery: Communities of the Seventh Congressional District.’ Their pieces embodied the spirit of the voting rights struggle across our nation. Opportunities like the art competition are critically important to the encouragement and betterment of our talented young people. I am truly proud of all of our aspiring artists that submitted entries.”
Lake Martin artist turns raw wood into arresting objects
The vessels in Michael Young’s boathouse on Lake Martin are not the kind you can ski behind. They’re artful wood creations, sometimes figurative, often abstract, that express his vision of what pieces of tree want to be. Like the sculptor who releases an imagined form from a block of stone, Young turns raw wood into arresting objects — literally turning them, on the lathes in his boathouse-turned-workshop. He’s a connoisseur of nature’s cracks and curves, of unusual wood grain, knotty burls and striking spalting (flaws caused by microorganisms and fungi acting on wood). Honoring the Japanese concept of wabi sabi (the beauty of imperfection), Young’s work takes many shapes, usually more eye-pleasing than functional. “If it won’t hold soup, then it’s art,” he says with a smile. As a teenager, he wound up in Wetumpka when his father retired from the Air Force and moved back to his native Alabama. Young studied art in high school, where he met Cindy, who would become his wife of 40 years. He went on to master woodworking as a successful maker of custom shutters and cabinetry. But he always made art on the side. When the economic downturn began in 2007, business at his Wetumpka shop “slowed way down,” he recalls. “That gave me more time to do what I really like to do. I could focus on my artwork.” After so many years, Young is expert at turning and cutting wood, sometimes using tools he’s fabricated. “You can go through the wall of a piece more than a few times before you get a feel for it,” he explains. “You have to listen to the wood – the sound changes as the wood gets thinner.” For pieces with very thin walls, he may use an aid he created, a lightbulb on ball bearings that shines from within as the work turns. While he sometimes buys rarer wood such as bird’s-eye maple, Young gets most of his material straight from nature. “I don’t cut it, I find it,” he says. “If you see me walking in the woods I’ll probably have my head down, looking for snakes and wood. Deadwood that’s almost rotten often yields beautiful colors and patterns in the grain.” Wormholes add interest to a vessel turned from persimmon, “a very hard wood, hard to work,” he comments. “I made this” – a vibrant bowl – “from an oak log raised from the bottom of Lake Martin. It looked totally gray and dead, but this was inside it.” Beyond vessel forms, Young makes sculptural pieces, sometimes seamlessly joining lathe-turned arcs into sinuous curves. Some works have a kinetic quality, incorporating rolling balls or an element floating on a pivot point. He’s made many fish – big and small, some meant to hang on a wall. “The fish pieces are very popular with lake dwellers,” he notes dryly. He may preserve part of the bark, color the wood, fill cracks with metal inlay or stitch a gap with leather lacing. “I’ll push a piece till I get what I want,” Young says. “I’d rather blow something up than settle for less than it could be.” Much of his creative process occurs in his lake-view studio, directly above the boathouse, part of the house where he and Cindy have lived for more than 15 years. Though wood is his favorite medium, Young also photographs, draws and paints, with each practice informing the others. He may use a drone to capture a spectacular Lake Martin panorama or an infrared camera to highlight the primeval nature of the Sipsey Wilderness. His HDR photos (high dynamic range, combining multiple exposures) give landscapes a hyper-real, painterly quality, which he enhances by printing them on canvas on his large-format Canon printer. His photos often inspire paintings, usually in watercolor, “an unforgiving medium – you can’t get white paper back once it takes the color,” he says. For example, he based a painting of Lake Martin’s Children’s Harbor lighthouse on a photo. Ultimately, his strongest connection is to wood, and trees. A favorite is the state’s largest poplar tree, which stands in the Sipsey Wilderness. “I’ve hugged that tree,” he marvels. “I love sitting in the peace and quiet of the woods.” The artist finds a kind of serenity in his shop, despite the din of power tools. “Turning’s not like a drawing or painting,” he explains. “When you start, you have to finish it – if you stop for long, the wood can change and warp. Turning’s like meditation; you have to be in the moment, paying attention.” His son, Heath, has taken over the family business, Custom Shutter & Millwork, in Wetumpka. Along with shutters, cabinetry and furniture, he makes fine segmented bowls, crafted from ingeniously assembled pieces of wood. “They’re beyond me,” Young says with pride. “Heath is a better woodworker than I am.” Young sells his works on his website and at juried art shows, often local events, such as Arti Gras at Russell Crossroads and Lil’ Calypso Art Festival at Chuck’s Marina, but also at the annual fair at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina. “An artist never stops improving,” he says. That’s true for all his artistic pursuits, especially woodworking. “I love giving new life to old wood,” Young declares. “Sometimes I say it’s just making sawdust. Whatever you end up with is cool.” For more information about Michael Young’s artwork, visit mhyoungart.com and heathyoungmillwork.com. This story was originally written for Alabama Power’s Shorelines. Republished with permission from the Alabama NewsCenter.
Maya Blume-Cantrell is an Alabama artist whose ideas are at play in the clay
At the Coastal Arts Center of Orange Beach, you might notice a gallery/studio space with functional pottery like bowls, mugs and plates, as well as sculptures. The studio belongs to Maya Blume-Cantrell, an artist producing both types of pottery and teaching classes on her favorite subject. “The functional pieces are made using a potter’s wheel, so everything starts with the symmetry and the circle. They are then thrown and carved while shaping the bottom and adding handles if they are going to be mugs,” Blume-Cantrell said. “The sculptural work is coil-built, which is basically rolling out long cylinders or snakes of clay about the size of my finger and adding them one layer at a time. With the coils, your form can be much more organic; you aren’t constricted by the circle.” Blume-Cantrell began working with clay when she was in college. She was infatuated with how amorphous it was. She wasn’t restricted by the shape of wood or metal. She also loved the dichotomy of making soft organic shapes and hard geometric shapes out of the same medium. “What I found intriguing about clay was the ability to make anything within your imagination. Almost all of my work is sold through the gallery here at the Coastal Arts Center. My sculptural work is featured in a couple of other galleries regionally. I have some work in Franklin, Tennessee, at Gallery 202; also in Robertson Gallery in Mobile,” Blume-Cantrell said. A resident artist at the Coastal Arts Center, Blume-Cantrell enjoys the visual and performing arts center in the Gulf Coast region of the state. All the artists there strive to enrich the lives of residents and visitors through interactive exposure to local art. “At the Coastal Arts, we teach classes on the wheel, as well as hand-building. We teach children’s and adult classes. Anything within your imagination that you want to make, we help you create it,” Blume-Cantrell said. Both Blume-Cantrell and her husband, Nick Cantrell, are artists. She considers it a privilege to live and work together. “My husband and I are very fortunate in that we have both reached a time in our lives where we can both be creative and make a living through our artwork. It’s very rewarding for someone to identify with a piece that I make, that they can find something that speaks to them in that piece,” Blume-Cantrell said. Some of Blume-Cantrell’s work has been sent to exotic places, in addition to selling all over the South. “I did some mugs for the captain of a ship that is based out of the Mediterranean. They started in Malta, came down through the Caribbean, raced up to Bermuda through the northeast Atlantic coast and they’re going to be cruising back. And yes, they made it through the Bermuda Triangle, but they would blame that on the rum,” Blume-Cantrell said with a laugh. Republished with permission from the Alabama NewsCenter.
For the love of Alabama art; Marcia Weber’s journey from collector to gallery owner
Marcia Weber wasn’t supposed to be a gallery owner. Her plan was to teach. But while working at the Montgomery Museum of Art, that plan went by the wayside. The Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., was planning a landmark exhibition of American black folk art, and the museum curators were having trouble helping Montgomery artist Mose Tolliver prepare. “His vocabulary, his Southern accent, was a little difficult for some of the curators there at the time,” she said. “I was very lucky that I got to go and meet Mose and spend a good bit of time with him.” At a post-show reception, first lady Nancy Reagan let it slip that she had acquired two of Tolliver’s paintings for the private quarters of the White House. A flood of fan mail followed, along with requests to purchase his work. Weber stepped in, continuing to visit Tolliver at his home to help him read and answer mail. (Tolliver couldn’t read.) “I would write on the bottom of the letter what he would tell me to write and send it back to the people and then they would send money to Mose,” she recalled. “In essence, I began to help him, really just as a friend.” Working with Tolliver helped Weber remove her “fine art glasses,” which opened her to the world of self-taught art. It’s a large field, made up of many parts. One is “outsider art,” which is often created by people who live outside of societal norms for reasons ranging from reclusiveness to mental illness. Another is “visionary art,” where an artist may have visions, largely religious in nature, and then create renditions of those visions. And then there’s Weber’s specialty, contemporary folk art. “We, here in Alabama, are lucky to have the cream of the crop of the painters in this particular field,” she said. That includes Tolliver, Jimmie Lee Sudduth, Charlie Lucas, Woodie Long, Howard Finster and Bill Traylor, whom Weber considers to be Alabama’s most important self-taught artist. The Smithsonian is planning a major retrospective of Traylor’s work in 2018. For Weber, focusing on self-taught art was not a decision. It just happened. “I was really drawn to it. I loved the color. I loved their use of composition. It was not contrived. It was very fresh,” she said. “And there was something about academically trained art, at that time, that was beginning to bore me.” So, she began collecting, traveling in and around Alabama and then branching out to other parts of the country. Soon, all of the fine art in her home was replaced by self-taught art. Eventually, Weber started toying with the idea of opening a gallery. Marcia Weber Art Objects was established in 1991. The gallery now carries more than 2,000 pieces and is the largest of its kind in Alabama. Self-taught art was not always seen as viable and valuable, and a lot of it has been lost along the way because of that. Also, many of the artists have died, particularly over the past decade or so. In the beginning, Weber was primarily tasked with selling art to help her clients keep their utility bills paid. Now, she’s more concerned with preservation. “I’m busy trying to save the masterpieces that come my way,” she said. “I’m so blessed to have an opportunity to not only know these artists, but to try to save the very best of what they create. And to hopefully get it into the hands of those who realize what this is and who will always save it.” Weber hosts her annual Holiday Open House at the gallery today, Dec. 7, from 2 p.m. until 8 p.m. There will be cheese straws. The public is welcome. On view now: “American Self-Taught Masters” and “Saints and Sinners – Latin American Folk Art.” Republished with permission from the Alabama NewsCenter.
Barack Obama made Kenyan artist’s name, but Donald Trump portraits fizzle
Kenyan artist Evans Yegon is sad to see President Barack Obama leave office. The artist has made a name for himself painting $1,000 portraits of Obama and he’s finding the new focus of his work — Donald Trump — a hard sell. Obama’s presidency electrified Kenyans, who are proud that his father was a Kenyan. Thousands thronged Obama’s visit to the country as president in 2015. Many express sadness at the impending end of Obama’s time in office. “Simple: Obama is a sort of miracle of the century,” journalist Ochieng Ogodo posted on Facebook. While Trump is an interesting subject with his facial expressions and persona, Yegon said he has struggled to find buyers for his paintings of the president-elect. “Even if you are a Donald Trump supporter, you don’t want to make it public,” Yegon said. “I painted him because he is hated and he is loved.” Yegon has sold just one Trump painting, to an American client, of the 10 he has painted so far. He said he sold 28 of the 30 Obama paintings he made during the outgoing president’s second term. Republished with permission of The Associated Press.
