Art for the Heart - “Coordinated Message” Exhibit at The Bridgewater Lofts
Sunday, April 5, 2020 at 4:17AMArticle by Mill District resident Lisa Schissel
Art for the Heart “Coordinated Message” Exhibit at The Bridgewater Lofts
Your taste in art is never wrong, as it is personal to you. What you like, others may not and vice versa.
When looking at a new piece of art in your home, family and friends may say “that’s interesting.” In Minnesota, there are over 750 definitions of “interesting,” so simply smile and know that regardless of what others say about your art, to you it truly is interesting.
Whether it's a memory or a feeling, a piece of art can evoke and validate powerful emotions. Art can cheer us up after a bad day, make us remember, or inspire us to do more in life. It can provide comfort that we are not the only ones feeling a certain way.
Most of all though, art is accessible and needed in everyday life. It helps those in need, gives people in the future an idea of what life was like, and is a vital form of self-expression.
Art is important because it encompasses all the domains in child development. Art lends itself to physical development and the enhancement of fine and gross motor skills. Children learn about themselves and others through art activities. It helps build self-esteem.
And finally, the mental health benefits of art are for everyone:
Now a little about the artists on display at The Bridgewater Lofts through May 6. Note, you can view the art available and on display for each artist via the websites noted below.
Kathy truly employs her artistic ability to “capture human gestures” in her Hours to Days, in which she used trained dancers as models for their ability to be expressive and hold demanding poses. The ceramic process she uses involves many layers. Observing the model at each layer creates images that are raw, expressive and show the most essential gestures.
Matthew’s Rhapsody in Grey oil on canvas uniquely captures his ability to find beauty in the mundane, everyday landscape that the majority of people take for granted: an empty loading dock at dusk; a van illuminated by a street light; headlights reflecting off of a stretch of wet pavement. It’s all about capturing mood and atmosphere, a quiet meditation or one fraught with mystery and intrigue.
Kathleen, a self-taught artist, is inspired by the beauty of the natural world, the complexity of the inner world, and the mystery of the spiritual world. The Praise in the Future brings to life her passion of painting the repetitive process of laying down encaustic (pigments mixed with hot wax that are burned in as an inlay), fusing, and repeating over and over to build layers to create a contemplative state of mind.
Judy turned to the arts at an early age with dance then later in life turned to the visual arts. With a concern about species survival, she was recently drawn to portraying trees in her Winter Connections, acrylics on canvas, as she learned more about their abilities to communicate and to heal one another.
Owen received his artistic training at Yale and the California College of Art. Taught in the figurative tradition, he will also work rather abstractly. As Owen has said, “Painting is not the same as speech, even when depicting a scene. We leap to a story, but it is the story behind the story, behind the speech that it is subject matter.” Owen’s View of the Stone Arch Bridge acrylic on canvas captures this moment.
Inspirations drawn from the natural world, from rock formations of major rift zones to landscapes of the western plains are captured in Anna’s Autumn Sky Grassland.
The original inspiration of these landscapes - what is visible on the surface - suggests the energy and phenomena that occurred under the surface but has come to rest, appearing immutable and quiet.
Candy was born seeing out of three-dimensional space and was trained as an artist and photographer. Portraits and landscapes are her new works where her intention is symbolic dreams living within and around our three-dimensional space and time. Her work, We Live in Love, can actually show you what she sees every day. “Just as others see darkness, I see vivid light.”
