ACCENT: Art club displays work at TAMU-T
TEXARKANA, Texas — Texarkana’s 4 States Regional Art Club has filled the John F. Moss Library with the creative visions of its talented artists for the local art club’s annual exhibit.
Displayed through mid-January, the show covers many types of art, from landscapes to portraiture, genre to abstract and more with artists both familiar and new included, each bringing colorful life to the white walls of the library at Texas A&M University-Texarkana.
Tammy Glenn serves as chairman of the art show this year. The number of works totals about 75, a bit down from other years but a strong representation of the diversity in the group. As in other years, an outside judge selected the show pieces.
“It’s a nice show. We had good, quality work. Our judge was Donna McGee and she is from West Monroe, Louisiana. She actually is a professor of art. She’s taught at Grambling (State University). She’s taught at Louisiana Tech (University),” Glenn said.
“This year our largest division was the abstract division. I think it generally is. Abstract, modern art — it’s kind of an individualized thing what you consider to be abstract and modern art. We had a lot of that,” Glenn said. Mixed-media works in that division were popular with one of them winning the division.
“Which is kind of a rarity for a piece of ceramics to win a division, but it did,” Glenn said. A young artist, one who turned 18 recently, won several awards. There’s interesting resin work, along with works from the standby artists who participate year in and year out — “and do wonderful, wonderful work.” They include Linda Larey, who won Best of Show this year.
“We had a lot of watercolor, I think, this year,” Glenn said, noting Larey shows a lot of movement in her work.
One of Larey’s works is a self-portrait, charmingly titled “Is That Me?” It won second place in portrait. And a portrait of that artist by Jeannie Knod Edwards won the top honors in that category.
Glenn herself got the first place nod for the animal category, an oil painting titled “NOLA’s Finest.” “Those are the New Orleans police horses. I did work from a photo on that,” the artist said. A photographer friend sent her the photo, which she routinely does. The photo included more horses, but her painting still perfectly captures their equine character.
“I just said, I love the gesture of these horses, so I kind of changed it up a little bit,” Glenn said.
One of the impressive pieces she’s quick to point out is a two-piece ceramics work by Jana Edwards. It’s a box with each piece fitting together like puzzle pieces. It requires serious skill.
“It’s very, very hard to get a ceramic piece to fit together. Usually when you put them in the kiln, something happens and they don’t ever fit quite right,” Johnson said. “But this fits perfectly.”
Other artists experimented with encaustics in watercolor and cold wax — even geodes. To see this great variety, check out the 4 States Regional Art Club’s show at A&M-Texarkana.
(The John F. Moss Library at Texas A&M University-Texarkana is located at 7101 University Ave. in Texarkana, Texas.)