Fayetteville Underground First Thursday Opening Reception April 1st 5-8pm: Fayetteville Underground turns 1 year old!
Join us Thursday April 1st. from 5-8pm for Fayetteville Underground’s first Thursday opening reception. This April marks a full year of great art shows at Fayetteville Underground! In April we will feature the brilliant and colorful portraits of painter Basil Seymour-Davies in the Vault Gallery. The E-Street Gallery will feature rustic jewelry by Teresa Hall. San Francisco schooled artist Matthew Depper will fill the Revolver Gallery with a playful and clever collection of paintings called "It Eels What it Eels" and paintings by Anthony TW Meyers will be shown in the Hive Gallery.
In the Vault: Between You and Me, Paintings by Basil Seymour-Davies
All the pieces tell a story. All the graphic information supports the narrative derived through the act of contemplating the relationship, shared experiences, and certain commonalities between subject and artist. Usually these graphic images are developed through a series of loose associations and as a result trigger a vague sense of some set of ideas. In the end, the initial narrative is not important. It is the lingering residues that matter. It is the impression of some insight into a person or place’s story that allows one to freely explore and interpret it. And by this process establishes the connections to make the story one’s own.
Basil Seymour-Davies spent his impressionable adolescent years in Bangkok, Thailand. He grew up staring in awe at the enormous hand painted billboards and movie posters that were are a part of a rich Thai tradition. When he decided to pursue painting in his late twenties he inevitably reverted back to the images of the larger than life figures and story vignettes he saw in the city streets as a kid. He currently lives and works in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
In the E-Street Gallery: Jewelry by Teresa Hall
As an evolving mixed metal artist, I have finally found artistic satisfaction that combines my passion for painting landscapes and torching, bending, and soldering metals. The results are rich patinas that I use to create a rustic style of art to include jewelry as well as wall pieces. My main source of inspiration has always been the landscape, especially inspired by the desert areas of New Mexico, where I spent several years in the early 1980′s.
I have always been a fan of form and function with regards to art, and as a self-taught jewelry designer and trained painter, I nowconsider myself to be a mixed metal artist with a focus on the rustic and organic forms abstracted from nature. My fascination began with an accidental walk around a junkyard some fifteen years ago where I discovered an array of metals and the intriguing patinas that were a result of weather, age, etc. I began experimenting with the manipulation of metals by hammering, torching and soldering forms to achieve desirable colors and shapes that I incorporated into large format wall hangings, as well as smaller investigations which I continue to explore in the form of jewelry. I consider the art of jewelry design to be closely related to sculpture, as my pieces involve building and balance to achieve a comfortable and aesthetically pleasing piece of jewelry that can be worn on a daily basis. In addition, there is a lot of satisfaction in transforming salvage into what I consider a rustic style of functional art.
It is my hope to transcend through the building process the spirit of nature as my art has always been inspired by the landscape. I live and work in Northwest Arkansas, but I spent quite a bit of time in Santa Fe, which still is the inspiration for many of my pieces because the copper patinas remind me of the peaceful, natural erosions found in the desert. Even though my pieces appear rough to the eye, they are very comfortable and smooth to wear. I am drawn mostly to bracelets because I believe they have an empowering feeling that I hope to share.
In the Hive Gallery: It Eels What it Eels, Paintings by Matthew Depper
Matthew Depper studied graphic illustration at the Academy of Art University San Francisco.
His latest body of work is a collection of stylized sea creatures painted on convex wood panels.
The title of the series,"It eels what it eels," reflects the typically clever and playful nature of Matthew’s art.
In the Revolver Gallery: Paintings by Anthony TW Myers
Growing up terrorizing a small town in Oklahoma, Anthony spent most of his childhood exploring abandoned structures, getting dirty in creeks, and pestering his fellow neighbor kids. During his perilous escapades, he’d hoped to discover a new unrecorded aquatic species, a real live ghost, or most importantly a true friend that was at least half as crazy as he was. Whether or not these aspirations ever became a reality is hardly relevant. His childhood ambitions stewed and fermented in his soul and his head throughout his life. They evolved and spun into all humanly possible directions getting expelled and contorted through drawings, mud sculptures with yarn hair, homemade forts, puppets, and finger paintings in the process. If the neighborhood kids didn’t fear Anthony’s capabilities, they might have envied them. But mostly, they ended up loving him because he brought something unique and priceless to the town and to the world.
