Janus: Looking Back, Looking Forward

Jan Hurt, Abingdon, VA

April 3 – 29, 2012

Artist Reception, Thursday, April 5, 2012

I am a storyteller by nature, and a surrealist one at that. I love to see bizarre juxtapositions, rich and varied surfaces, and unsettling situations. My work is deeply influenced by my life experiences, so in a sense, it is also autobiographical.

Both in west Texas and southwest Virginia, Hurt has been an active arts organizer and advocate. She loves puns, as does the family she married into, and once organized a printmakers exhibit entitled, One Day My Prints Will Come. Besides being an artist, she is a foodie, wino, and crazy cat lady with seventeen cats and counting.

Aleta Cortes, Pipestem, WV

February 28 – April 1, 2012

Artist Reception, Thursday, March 8, 6-8pm in conjunction with the opening of Color Me Bad: Animation, Pop, and Satire

“Reflecting” is a photographic series of manmade objects, primarily older model cars. The photographs were taken at car shows around southern Virginia and West Virginia. The photographs have not been manipulated; they are what is seen upon looking at the reflections from the polished surfaces of old cars. At times people walking past appear as rivers of color while patterns and objects distort from simple movement and splashes of light.

Cortes lives in southern West Virginia. Although her background is in painting, for the past thirteen years, she has worked solely with photography. Cortes received a BFA from Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA, and has shown her work throughout the region.

Deborah Bryan, Johnson City, TN

January 31- February 26, 2012

Artist Reception, Thursday, February 2, 6-8pm

People have noticed that when I walk, I often look down at the ground. This represents my fascination with discarded, unwanted, lost, misplaced, faded, trampled and frayed objects. This print series entitled Detritus, takes that philosophy to a logical conclusion, one in which objects that would normally be overlooked, or even thought of as debris, are portrayed as worthy of consideration.

Bryan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Design at Tusculum College in Greenville, Tennessee. She regularly exhibits her work nationally and internationally and is featured in many permanent collections.  Bryan was featured in William King Museum’s From These Hills exhibition juried by Ray Kass in 2009.