Mills Gallery opens ‘Without Words’ and ‘Emerge’
Emotive personal reflections on canvas are highlighted in two new exhibitions opening this week at Mills Gallery.
“Without Words: Release the Paint” features works by Patricia Byron while “Emerge: The Art of Fellowship” showcases Crealdé School of Art’s painting and drawing fellowship and studio artists. The pair of exhibitions open Aug. 3 with a public reception within the space near the intersection of Mills and Virginia avenues.
Byron is the painting and drawing program manager at Crealdé, where she also teaches the Exploring Abstract Painting class. While her works on view at the Mills Gallery individually seem non-objective and abstract, they create an introspective personal history when viewed as a whole.
“She’s exploring painting as poetry and as a flow of consciousness,” said Jennifer McInnes Coolidge, one of the exhibition’s curators. “I react to her work on how it makes me feel emotionally and how I connect to it. You bring to it what you will and then you complete it.”
Tana Rey, who co-curated the shows with Coolidge, was excited to display the art of other Crealdé fellows and artists while also highlighting the work of Byron, her teacher and mentor.
“She looked at my artwork and cracked my head open like a little egg. I was so tight with my brushstrokes and had all these expectations about what these art pieces were supposed to be,” said Rey, who’s making her curatorial debut with these exhibitions. “In some of the pieces, I can see her spirit and her history. We wanted to highlight what her life has been like.”
In the Lump Gallery, a part of the Mills Gallery space, visitors can see work by Rey, Patricia Schoene, Yasmin Fakhoury, Roland Cruse, Vera Gubnitskaia, Paula Lupton, Alison Wray, Tate Oquendo and Mark Snedeker.
Together, this pair of exhibitions puts a spotlight on the relationship between a mentor and the makers learning from her, as well as the collaboration that happens within Mills Gallery.
“Part of the goal of Mills Gallery is to elevate artists, and this is a great thing for these students to have their work on the walls in a gallery space,” Coolidge said. “To be able to partner with Tana was such a great journey, along with getting to know Patricia. She goes on a journey and sees where it leads her.”
IF YOU GO
“Without Words: Release the Paint” and “Emerge: The Art of Fellowship” open during a reception 6-8:30 p.m. Aug. 3 at 1650 N. Mills Ave. in Orlando. Admission is free and open to the public. The show is on view through Aug. 31 and can be seen 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Saturday, the gallery’s opening hours. For more information, go to millsgalleryoforlando.com.