TCVA.org

Hours Tuesday - Thursday & Saturday: 10am-6pm

Friday: 12pm-8pm

July 3 - September 26, 2015 Community Gallery

Motivated by a love of the past, a quiet meditative sensibility and the desire to make the world a better place, artist Nancy Brittelle seamlessly takes old things apart to give them new form as sculptural objects. Three of her altars (Altar, Altar II and Altar III) are included in the exhibition, Reassembling from the Heavy Metal Series. It is the artist’s wish that when these pieces find new homes they are used as personal altars continuing their trajectory of new life. Made of every day materials, Brittelle’s Altars help focus attention on the ordinary things in one’s life that provide rich meaning and texture.

Part of a growing movement that recycles discarded material for new artwork, the artist collects egg cartons, cardboard boxes and wine-bottle shipping cartons by the score, repurposing what all to frequently is discarded and finds its way to the landfill instead of a recycling center or into the hands of an alchemist.

-Mary Anne Redding, Turchin Center Curator

“I have increasingly found myself drawn to images which so fascinated me as a child before the influences of others began to affect my way of seeing the world. I can recall playing with cardboard and other types of papers to create interior worlds for my dolls and their accessories. Reconnecting with these early discoveries has led me in a new direction, one tending toward the sculptural rather than the two-dimensional, and one in which I can use recycled and water-based materials to create art. For me as an artist, it is an endlessly fascinating adventure to take ordinary materials and transform them into something resembling ancient forms made of precious metals looking centuries old but shaped within a modern context.”

Artist Statement:

Reassembling from the Heavy Metal SeriesNancy Brittelle

Copper Moon XII, 2012Acrylic on cardboard and pressed paper

TCVA.org

Heavy Metals Collage Workshop

Taught by artist Nancy Brittelle, workshop participants will learn a new art skill! These four-day sessions focus on art created with cardboard and acrylic paint. Participants will be making 2 projects. One is a “shield” made from a single cardboard box and the other is a collage of torn pieces of cardboard, both mounted on gallery wrapped canvas. Classes will be for teens and adults and will run for four consecutive days of three-hour sessions.

For more information and to register for the workshop please visit our website or call 828.262.3017

June 22 - 25, 2015: 1 - 4pm

Nancy Brittelle was born in 1949 in Bayshore, NY and grew up in central New Jersey. She began painting in 1995 and within a year was asked to begin showing in galleries. After 10 years as a realistic painter, her work began to increasingly feature abstract, expressionistic forms and subject matter. While driving one afternoon, she spotted a cardboard box lying beside the road that was becoming disfigured in the rain and was struck by its beauty. Upon returning home, she retrieved a box from her garage, set it out on the deck in the rain and replicated the process. After bringing the box back into her studio and reconfiguring it, she then glued it together and painted it with acrylic paint. This process of reformed deconstruction is now a primary feature in her work, taking the form of both wall and free-standing sculptures.

Nancy now lives and works in Blowing Rock in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Her work is found in collections around the United States and abroad. She has shown in many solo and group exhibits and continues to develop her Heavy Metal series in which she creates sculptures from the endless variety of paper packaging materials found in our everyday lives. A self-taught artist, Nancy considers Robert Rauschenberg and Louise Nevelson to be major influences. Her source material consists almost entirely of expendable commercial waste, counterbalancing our fragmented, disposable culture. The resulting work seeks to unite opposing forces in our modern society – the East and the West, the contemporary and the ancient, the metaphysical and the industrial.

About the Artist:

Pillar, 2015Acrylic on cardboard