Pearce Museum at Navarro College offers Opening Day events for A New Look at the West that Excite, Educate, and Entertain
The Pearce Museum at Navarro College offers visitors, artists, patrons, and anyone with artistic interests a chance to explore the exciting, ever-changing world of Western Art through A New Look at the West. This large-scale Show & Sale opens to the public October 25, 2014 with a full day of events focused on Western Art at Pearce Museum.
The day starts out with demonstrations from artists participating in the show. At 10 am, artist Kara Young showcases her mixed media techniques, and will provide insight into the use of paper-making and copper smelting in her artwork.
Handmade paper is the “canvas” that enhances the organic, “soft” feeling of my creations. The unique nature of my work is in combining fired metals, paper, and other materials to represent nature’s process of aging as found in rusted metals, dry river beds, and stained stone walls.
-Kara Young
Trish Booth will follow with an in-depth look at her oil paintings and the use of abstraction in her landscapes.
Vernacular and historic architecture along with landscape are the vehicles I use to convey isolation and otherness. Representational, yet surreal, paintings inhabit a twilight zone between reality and imagination. Abstracting the images to various degrees further incorporate a sense of mystery allowing structures and landscapes to read as symbolic spaces – as portals or refuges.
-Trish Booth
Rounding out the artist demonstrations is scratchboard artist Stephanie Ford. She will shed light on her unique method of art-making through a special, rarely used, media.
I use my extensive background in history to create detailed works in scratchboard. A subtractive medium, I feel many times as if I am pulling a scene from history out of the shadows. I create work on ink coated clayboards using tools such as hobby knives, steel wool, and sandpaper.
-Stephanie Ford
In the afternoon, from 2:30 to 4 pm, The Pearce Museum at Navarro College will host several professionals in the Western Art field who will participate in a discussion panel to explore the genre as it has progressed and changed. How do artists today define the Western Art genre? Is the “New West” movement counter to traditional Western Art? And what role can Western Art play in educating new generations about life in the West- both historical and current? These questions and others will be debated in detail as we attempt to navigate the genre.
In the evening, the Museum invites patrons to join us for a special dinner and awards ceremony recognizing the artists participating in the show. After food, fun, and conversation, guests move to the Western Art gallery to enjoy desserts and the opening of the sale. All works of art will be for sale and the proceeds benefit the Pearce Museum at Navarro College, helping support educational programs, events, and exhibitions that further the museum’s mission:
To connect with the past by engaging todays visitor through personal perspectives of the Civil War and the American West.
The opening events for A New Look at the West promise to be exciting, informative, and entertaining for all. Artist demonstrations and the discussion panel are free and open to the public. To purchase tickets to the Awards Dinner and Show & Sale, contact Pearce Museum staff at 903-875-7642.
Planning a special event?
The Arts Center welcomes submissions from all artists in the DFW Metroplex and surrounding areas – Tarrant, Dallas, Collin, Cooke, Denton, Ellis, Grayson, Hill, Hood, Hunt, Jack, Johnson, Kaufmann, Navarro, Palo Pinto, Parker, Rockwall, Somervell and Wise counties for the 2015 Art in the Metroplex Exhibition. Exhibition is October 9 – 30, 2015 at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center, 1300 Gendy, Fort Worth, TX 76107. Juror is Peter Doroshenko of the Dallas Contemporary. Awards TBA. Deadline August 22, 2015. Artists may submit up to three pieces. Non-refundable fee is $35. 
