Pair of exhibits opening at Wayne Center for the Arts
The Gault and Looney Galleries at Wayne Center for the Arts will be filled with art pieces this March and April. The Functional Ceramics Workshop, a program of the Ohio Designer Craftsmen, will open an exhibit in the Looney Gallery March 18 through April 20. Sixteen ceramic artists will have their pieces on display and for sale, and the public is invited to view these pieces from artists across the country.
The Functional Ceramics Workshop is a nationally recognized workshop for potters creating works that are meant to be used. It will take place April 19-20. It began in Wooster in 1977 when Phyllis Blair Clark and The College of Wooster Art Department hosted the Wooster Workshop with artists Ginny and Tom Marsh as demonstrators. A total of 35 students attended.
That workshop — and the accompanying exhibition — expanded over the years, thanks to Clark’s guidance, eventually becoming the Functional Ceramics Workshop. In 1987 Clark moved the event to the newly renovated Wayne Center for the Arts.
“We are very fortunate to have this gathering of artists here in Wooster,” clay coordinator Adam McVicker said. “The caliber of work displayed in the exhibit and the instruction at the Functional Ceramics Workshop is outstanding.”
This year’s keynote speakers are Mark Nafziger from Archbold and Lisa Orr from Austin, Texas.
Another exhibit will open in the Gault Gallery on March 21. Kathryn Arango has brought her latest series of narrative fabric paintings, a collection named “Parallel Realities,” to the Wayne Center for the Arts. The exhibit will be on display through April 17 with an opening reception and book-signing on Thursday, March 21 from 5-7 p.m.
“Parallel Realities” illustrates goings-on in and around a little fishing village on Colombia’s Caribbean coast where Arango and her husband became part of a community that included friends who had come to live in the Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta with their Indigenous Kogi neighbors. The lack of resources in the area creates a variety of lifestyles, with alternative economic systems and different rules.
Arango has published nonfiction articles in trade, travel and literary magazines in English and Spanish. In 2010 Jungle, Solitude and Dreams, a memoir about living in the outback of Colombia, was printed. As does her writing, her visual art tells a story. She has been creating textile art for over 40 years and has won awards in national and international exhibitions. Her art is included in collections around the world.