III+I=ART exhibit opens today
The City of Marquette Art and Culture Center Gallery and Lake Superior Art Association will present: III+I=ART featuring water media artists Kathleen Conover, Kathleen Mooney, Mary Ann Beckwith, and jeweler, Amy Conover. These artists are known for their practice of exploring concepts, experimenting with both new and traditional materials, and educating others about their processes to encourage creative individuality and self-expression.
Kathleen Conover is currently working on a series entitled “The Industrial Evolution” about the changes America is undergoing in its struggling technology and manufacturing industries. Much of the work in this series is inspired by the Marquette iron ore docks and power lines which are majestic symbols of this nation’s era of world leadership and a reminder of an era of change.
Kathleen Mooney uses signs and symbols, color and mark making, Neolithic art and archaeology to form thoughtful and thought provoking abstract paintings. Mooney along with Beckwith and Conover are signature members of the National Watercolor Society and the International Society of Experimental Artists.
Mary Ann Beckwith is a painter and teacher with a passion for both. She is a 41 year resident of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan from which she derives much inspiration. A professor of art at Michigan Tech University, she has twice been the recipient of the university’s Distinguished Teaching Award. In her words ‘Painting and helping others to experience painting still gives me a flutter in my stomach, a kind of lightheaded joy and satisfaction like that of a thirst quenched. I love the stages of painting: all the stages. That pristine white surface and the vision of what ‘might be,’ the first bits of color or lines, and then, slowly, the awareness that this whole process might be beyond my control….’
Amy R. Conover’s current work is a Post-Industrial Reclamation series in which she disassembles obsolete technological products to explore the aesthetics and symbolism of culture and honor the anonymous artisans of industry. She combines these relics with traditional and antique components to create jewelry that is urban, edgy, beautiful, and rich in conceptual depth and symbolism. Trained in the fine arts, Amy combines her love of tinkering and her passion for social activism to show the value of the materials we so often waste. Her hope is to bring awareness to the importance of recycling, re-using, and re-purposing in all of the beautiful forms it may take.
III+I=ART will be on display at the Marquette Arts and Culture Center Gallery on the lower level of the Peter White Library. The exhibit will show from July 31 through August 31st with a public reception for the artists in the Art Center Gallery on Thursday, August 2nd from 6-8 p.m.