Artworks Gallery - October 2005

Artworks Artworks Gallery is presenting a two-person exhibit entitled, "Natural Forces", by Alix Hitchcock and Nel M. Otero Flatow.

Alix Hitchcock is showing works on paper in with various mediums including ink, watercolor, and wax. Her imagery deals with human and/or bird forms in an abstracted space incorporating flora and a sense of natural forces such as wind creating movement and time shifts. Ms. Hitchcock teaches drawing at Wake Forest University, and received her MA in painting at NYU and her BFA in painting and printmaking at UNC-G. She was Winston-Salem Artist of the Year in 1998. www.AlixHitchcock.com

Nel M. Otero Flatow is showing large charcoal drawings and smaller monoprints, plus a few paper pulp paintings. Tree forms and references to "natural forces" dominate these works. To quote the artist: "Nature terrifies me as a result of having grown up in New York City. Nevertheless I am drawn to the natural world, but I approach it both gingerly, and deferentially. Drawing in my journals has been a way of controlling these irrational terrors. The world I compose is reassuring, yet powerful, not ordered. The directness and grittiness of charcoal drawings in particular reflect what I am experiencing. What can be more connected to the earth than charcoal, especially when I have used a charred piece of pine found in the woods behind Penland School of Crafts in NC?"

"The Pulp paintings of Haystack’s Piney woods were done outside under a canopy of these woods one glorious August week in Maine. Pulp painting is done using squeeze bottles filled with cotton pulp mixed with pigment and formation aid, and squeezed unto a deckle edge wire frame. The water filters through and the pulp remains on the surface incorporating itself unto the fiber of the paper. The owl tree has been dead for many years but it manages to hold on through rough Maine winters. The Georgia O’Keefe tree was washed ashore on the beach by a powerful storm and there it remains, although its location changes seasonally. Bleached white and etched ebony black in places, it seems to have been lifted from the desert surrounding the Ghost ranch in New Mexico and deposited along the shore of Haystack in Maine. All of these are Forces of Nature, which I tremble before and celebrate with every stroke of my hand and my soul."

Mrs. Flatow was born in La Havana, Cuba, grew up in Colorado, NYC, Ohio, and studied in New York City. As an adult she has lived in NYC, Honolulu, Atlanta, Winston Salem and Sydney, Australia

October 4 - 29, 2005 Reception: Friday, October 7th; 7 - 10pm

Dead Haystack Owl Tree sintra print on handmade paper, 16" x 12"		Finding Peace ink, watercolor, 36" x 29"
Nel M. Otero Flatow		Alix Hitchcock