Painter and printmaker Karen Albanese Campbell has mounted a wealthy and assorted selection of is effective that celebrate the Earth and its inhabitants. Appropriately, her location is the Grange Insurance plan Audubon Centre just south of Downtown Columbus.
By artwork that depicts purely natural landscapes and individuals that make their way by way of them, the Columbus artist has captured magnificence as very well as hardships experienced.
The 30 parts in the show are displayed in hallways that wind close to the roomy center. Whilst the lighting is fewer than fantastic, the place invites, as Albanese Campbell claimed, “chance encounters with art.”
The most significant operates are in the artist’s “The Travelers” sequence. In acrylic paint on irregularly formed canvases, Albanese Campbell depicts men and women or spouse and children associates wrapped in blankets adorned with clouds and other sky photos. The travelers, whom the artist describes in the accompanying panel as “globally displaced persons,” seem to be to stroll gradually ahead, all in the identical direction.
The similarly themed “Caravan” sequence of prints provides one figures encouraged, the artist said, by the “shape designed when men and women wrap by themselves in blankets though walking as noticed in news photos of migrants and refugees.” These tourists, whose colorful blankets are decorated with tulip-formed flowers, refer to a passage from Proverbs: “Strength and dignity are her clothes and she smiles at the long term.”
A single of the most attractive is effective is “Consider The (Trout) Lilies,” an 8- by 4-foot acrylic-and-bronze paint mural that pays homage to a unusual and fragile flower that Albanese Campbell learned in her Clintonville yard. Scattered towards a deep-environmentally friendly track record are about 30 pale violet and white lilies. The wall hanging is accompanied by Mary Oliver’s calming poem “Trout Lilies.”
Amid the numerous other will work in this various exhibit are the linocut relief prints “Forest Shadows I and 2,” scenes of gnarly trees and lush leaves in greens and blues. The woodcut “Walking at Night” is a moody scene of swirling inexperienced and blue styles versus a evening sky.
“Sleeping in the Dogwoods,” a collagraph with reduction and gold paint, focuses on a figure huddled in a sleeping posture it is night and likely wintertime considering that the gold tree branches are bare.
In the “Earthquake Collagraph” series, Albanese Campbell visits the aftermath of the 2015 Nepal earthquake that killed virtually 9,000 persons and manufactured numerous additional homeless. 10 prints feature shiny medallions surrounded by fragments of falling debris. In creating these, Albanese Campbell writes, “I am searching for the beauty in the rubble.”
Albanese Campbell, 63, a native of Syracuse, New York, earned her bachelor of great arts in painting from Boston College. Just before returning to fine artwork, she put in much more than 20 many years as a graphic designer.
In Columbus, she is president of Phoenix Rising Printmaking Cooperative which she describes as a local community for individuals who pursue the solitary operate of an artist.
Her performs established in solitary on screen at the Audubon Middle is really worth checking out.
At a glance
“Karen Albanese Campbell: Interactions with the Pure World” carries on by way of Sept. 17 at the Grange Insurance Audubon Center, 505 W. Whittier St. Hrs: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays, midday to 5 p.m. Sundays. The centre is complying with CDC overall health tips. Simply call 614-545-5475 or check out www.grangeinsuranceauduboncenter.org.