Opening Reception: Friday, February 10 from 6-8 PM
“Uncovered Beauty” features the work of two Huntsville-based artists, Everett Cox and Ann Moeller Steverson. Both are featured artists at Lowe Mill, a rehabilitated historic factory turned arts community. While Cox works primarily in three-dimensions and Steverson works in two, their work shares a common theme: that people are beautiful, so beauty is all around us.
Everett Cox finds beauty in the physical – the sculptural form of the human figure. “I sculpt figures in clay and then cast them in bronze,” he explains. Cast bronze sculpture is a heavily labor-intensive method of creating a permanent copy of a temporary sculpture, such as one made of clay. The process involves molten metal and temperatures reaching into the one-thousand degree range. “It’s a hot, nasty job but if you’re fascinated with an intense fire, nothing beats casting metal.” The result of Cox’ hard work are detailed, realistic bronze sculptures of the human form. “The contrast between the feminine form and the brutal, masculine process involved in getting the clay to the bronze is ever-present to me,” Cox adds. In selecting subjects for his work, Cox doesn’t seek out a specific body type or ‘look’. “I sculpt anyone willing to model and have sculpted a variety of shapes and sizes. And I have found that there is beauty where you look for it.” Expanding on that idea, Cox does not seek to idealize the figure in his work. “The ‘average’ looking person is so common we tend not to consider the beauty of the average as it’s all around us. But the beauty is there if you’ll look and just maybe the common beauty is the ideal.”
Ann Moeller Steverson expresses similar ideas in her stunning oil paintings, though her methods are different. “Who we are in the dark – the parts that are hidden, the words born in whispers or even left unsaid– are just as vitally beautiful as the pieces of ourselves that find their way into the light,” she says. Using classical oil painting techniques and a skillful rendering of light and illumination, Steverson explores emotional relationships, sensuality, and mood. “I seek those human experiences that are mysterious as they are beautiful, the moments that shine even in the dark.” Steverson’s work creates an interaction with the viewer, inviting them into a captured moment of time. “These pieces are pinpointed moments of intense beauty where the light and glow are so strong that they touch us at our core, this interaction of our senses that reaches the very heart of us,” she explains. In contrast to Cox’ more objective, realistic view of the figure, Steverson imbues her images with an aura of the fantastic. “My work shows reality viewed through a lens slightly clouded with fantasy and corresponds to my romantic view of the world.”
“Uncovered Beauty” will be on display at Walnut Gallery from February 10 through March 31. More information, including directions and hours, can be found on the Gallery’s Facebook page and official website, www.walnutgallery.org
The Walnut Gallery is a contemporary art gallery and school for fine arts. It is an extension of Walnut Gallery Inc., a non-profit organization founded in 2007 that seeks to promote contemporary art by providing exhibition space to up-and-coming artists and to provide a quality education in visual arts.