Featured artists are from Valdosta and Jacksonville
The Turner Center for the Arts will host the fine arts collections of Sean Hurley, Kristy Hughes, Jenny Hager & D. Lance Vickery, as well as the literary works of author Cheryl Carvajal, in a free Gallery Opening Reception on Monday, Sept. 16, from 5-7 p.m. The event will take place at the Turner Center galleries, located at 527 N. Patterson Street.
This gallery opening is unique in that it features two married couples extremely talented in their specialties.
Hurley and Hughes are members of the art faculty at Valdosta State University.
Hurley is an illustrator and print maker, whose drawings and prints examine the world with an unwavering eye for certainty and detail. Hurley’s work is well known among printmakers especially throughout the northeast, and they can be found in dozens of private collections as well as the collections of the Boston Athenaeum, the University of New Hampshire Museum of Art, and the Ogunquit Museum of American Art. His work is regularly exhibited in New York by Ebo Gallery and at The Old Print Shop, and in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at Piscataqua Fine Arts.
Hughes is an abstract expressionist mixed-media artist who creates colorful collaged paintings about the human experience of knowing and not knowing. In her work, Hughes navigates between the contradictions of internal and external experience, paying attention to moments of simultaneity. Her work has been shown across the US, at venues in Brooklyn, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Indianapolis and has been published in Friend of the Artist, Burnaway, Cut Me Up Magazine, Execute Magazine, among others.
Vickery and Hager teach sculpture at the University of North Florida.
Vickery’s work balances between formalist sculpture and aesthetics and conceptual considerations of materials. He utilizes the tension between interiority and exteriority, both metaphorically and physically, in his works. These ideas manifest themselves in the process, materials and concepts. The pieces are rich in surface, texture and color, while visceral and physical in the process by which they were created.
Hager is a mixed-media and installation artist, whose artwork “Wings” was publicly displayed in Smith Park, in Valdosta, for the past year. Hager is interested in a variety of processes and materials, and finds inspiration in dreams, objects from her childhood, gadgets, sea life and other curiosities. She is also very interested in collaboration; the spirit of community is important in both her teaching practice and in her own work. Hager’s work has been exhibited across the country and recently in the Cymru Ironstone Castle Exhibition in Wales, the Pedvale Open-Air Art Museum in Latvia and Il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri in Seggiano, Italy. Hager created Sculpture Walk and UNF Seaside Sculpture Park, both in Jacksonville, Fla.; and she and Vickery created a sculpture on the Campus Program at UNF, among other projects.
Most Turner Center Gallery Opening Receptions also feature local authors and book-signing opportunities. The Sept. 16 reception is no exception and will feature the writings of Cheryl Carvajal, English teacher at Wiregrass Georgia Technical College and wife of Valdosta State University President Richard Carvajal. Her books are available for purchase on the night of the event and are also available in the Turner Center Gift Shop. At the event, Carvajal will help the Turner Center launch a new writing program for youth called, Young Writers League, that will be led by Carvajal on Saturday mornings at the center, beginning on Oct. 12.
The East African Artifacts and the Fine European Porcelain collections—both permanent collections of the Turner Center—will be displayed in the Tillman and Howard Galleries respectively at the event.
“The Turner Center is proud to host and support the inspired works of these local artists at the free Sept. 16 Gallery Opening Reception,” said Executive Director Sementha Mathews. “Free admission to the Turner Center is made possible by the continued generous support of local members and donors. We invite the public to experience the fine art displayed at this community event, while using the opportunity to also become more familiar with everything your arts center has to offer for patrons of all ages.”
The gallery offerings will remain on display through Oct. 30 at the Turner Center. For more information on the upcoming Gallery Opening Reception or other services offered by the Turner Center for the Arts, call 229-247-2787 or visit www.turnercenter.org.
