The Waldron Arts Center announces new April exhibitions: The 4 O’Clock Hour

The John Waldron Arts Center welcomes five talented artists for a group show in the Rosemary P. Miller Gallery this April. The 4 O’Clock Hour features work by artists Dawn Adams, Meg Lagodzki, Ellen Starr Lyon, Sarah Pearce, and Christy Weezer. Works included display a range of mediums, including oil paintings, large collages, drawings, and glass work.

Each artist featured is part of a group that meets monthly, appropriately at 4:00pm. This group formed with a commitment to continuing their artistic practices and to create a space conducive to critique, finding space in days filled with responsibilities, both personal and professional. Their dedication to each other has provided an opportunity for artistic growth, while also cultivating collegial bonds and community, something that can be rare in a profession as solitary as that of an artist. This show offers the kind of variety visitors can expect from a group show, focusing on distinct interpretations of nature using realism, symbolism, modernism, and abstraction.

The show will open during First Friday Gallery Walk, April 4, from 5-8pm. There will be a closing event including a talk with the artists on Sunday, April 27. Doors will open at 5:30pm, with the talk to commence at 6:00pm.

Continuing in the Educational Gallery is Thin Slices of Time by Aina Puce, and in the Spotlight Gallery is House Series by Rod Bradfield.

ARTIST BIOS
Dawn Adams writes, “In 2007, my art practice became integral to my recovery from personal tragedy.  I turned to imagery that allowed me to look away from myself and my grief toward the elemental and to my connection to the natural world.  Water has been my muse for many years, and now I am exploring wondrous iterations of the sky.  It is my wish that these works be a panacea for all to look at, allowing chatter to leave the mind and calm to enter. Healing.”

Meg Lagodzki (b. 1970) received a BFA in painting from St. Mary’s College in 1992 and an MA in Art Therapy from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999. She now paints full-time in her studio near Bloomington, Indiana. Her painting practice includes extensive observation and study outside in nature with her sketchbooks and plein air easel. In her recent studio work, she uses hand-painted papers to construct images with collage and acrylic.  Her work is attentive to changes in the landscape, through both natural causes and man-made and the urgency of re-establishing connections with the natural world in a time of climate change and bio-diversity collapse. She is represented by Momentum Gallery in Asheville, North Carolina. 

Ellen Starr Lyon, b. 1974 in Columbus, Indiana, is a figurative painter focusing on modern portraiture that revolves around feminism, motherhood, and coming of age. Her naturalistic painting style incorporates a colorful palette and multiple thin, luminous layers capturing her models in natural light. Lyon uses her own photography to catch unguarded moments that are translated into oil paintings showing glimpses of emotion on the faces of those around her. Lyon champions vulnerability as strength while presenting it as our common language. Her Red Glove Series depicts her teenage daughter wearing bright red rubber gloves and a defiant expression to talk about the next generations’ fight for reproductive freedom. She has work in the permanent collection of the Evansville Museum, UC Irvine, Indiana University, and the Igleheart Foundation. 

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Sarah Pearce earned a BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design, an MFA in painting from Indiana University, and a Masters of Education from Lesley College. With a penchant for bright colors and ambiguous spaces, Pearce draws from the legacy of Modernism spanning from the early 20th century Expressionists up through the gestural painters of the 1960s. She uses this inheritance of formal language to make images that capture a sense of embeddedness of multiple parts and dynamics into an integrated whole. She draws pictorial inspiration from natural landscapes and scenes of ordinary life, in pursuit of more conceptual themes like memory, growth, and ideas about the difference between what is “inner” or “outer” and what separates them.

Christy Weezer is a Bloomington local studio artist and community/public artist. As a studio artist, Christy works in series and through the mediums of paint, glass, and mosaic. Concepts center around recurring patterns in nature and mythologies that create symbols and double meanings throughout her work. Her work continues into the realm of interactive art as a skatepark designer/builder with Hunger Skateparks, using decorative concrete techniques and mosaic inlays. Conversely, the skatepark seeps back into her work in the studio as represented by her amoeba bowl series on display. ​