Gallery Openings and Artist Receptions

April Gallery Opening and Artist Reception: April 14th, 5:30 to 7:30pm

The Creative Arts Guild is pleased to announce the opening of three new exhibits on Friday, April 13th: “While It Lasts”, an exhibit by Knoxville artist, Sarah Moore, will be presented in Gallery Five20; “The Printed Walk”, a series of letter-press prints by Lindsey Schmittle, owner of Gingerly Press in Lansdale PA, will be displayed in Gallery One11. And, selections from the coursework of Dalton High School Senior IB Art Students and work by CAG visual Arts students will be exhibited in Jonas Hall.  As always, the Creative Arts Guild Gallery Opening and Artist Reception series is free and open to the public.

While It Lasts

Sarah Moore describes her exhibit, While It Last, as “a body of work mapping the landscapes that I physically yearn to inhabit, again and again, as if by compulsion. These are unsettled places, rough and wild with high topographic contrast. Each painting is a response to intense wanderlust. The paintings also evoke a sense of urgency: no landscape remains unaltered by time, and increasingly so, by human impact.

The Printed Walk

Lindsey Schmittle’s The Printed Walk, is a series of printed visual interpretations of her experience thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail in 2017. Letterpress printing is a relief printing process in which antique metal or wood type is inked and pressed onto paper. Lindsey used mostly metal type & ornament paired with large carved blocks of linoleum, various plywood and MDF.  On the hike, she collected fallen birch bark to use for certain designs and found pigments along the trail, such as charcoal from wildfires, mica, and clay, to crush and mix with transparent white ink for a natural ink pigments. This experimental printing pursuit made the hike feel like a playful scavenger hunt. “In this way”, she says, “The hike proved to be a practice of mindfulness - a long walking meditation focused on being present and simply observing the world around me”.  “While hiking,” she says, “I learned that the trail is what I make of it. The difference between happiness, sadness, boredom, frustration or fear was personal choice. Therefore, to survive the journey mentally, I had to choose to be happy and find the good in some crumby situations; I find this not only a philosophy for the trail, but also for everyday life. The stories told through the print series represent events I experienced on the trail through a positive lens, celebrating the beauty at all times, even in the most unfortunate and challenging situations.” 

Combined Exhibit of DHS IB Art Students & CAG Art Students

Also featured in this month’s Gallery Opening and Artist Reception will be work by several Dalton High School IB art students and work by some of the Guild’s own Visual Arts students including students from Cross Plains Community Partner.

Seven exceptional DHS student artists, Noemy Menchaca, Yoselin Chavarria, Triston Concuan, Jailyn Machado, Viviana Martinez, Cristine Torres, and Morgan Young, will be exhibiting selections from their IB (International Baccalaureate) coursework accomplished over the past 2 years.  Dalton High School IB Art students endure a rigorous course of study requiring them to experiment in a variety of media, participate in regular critiques of their artwork, research many artistic and cultural topics, and keep a record of their creative processes. They have been studying a wide variety of artists, art styles, media, cultures, and artistic issues from which each has built a self-directed body of work of their own. From that body the artist is required to curate 4 – 11 of their best pieces into an exhibition.

The International Baccalaureate, is an educational foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland and founded in 1968. It was established to offer a continuum of superior educational programs that encourage both personal and academic achievement, challenging students to excel not only in their studies but in their personal development as well. To teach these programs, schools must apply to and be authorized by the International Baccalaureate Organization.

The Guild is located at 520 West Waugh St. in Dalton. Find out more at our website - creativeartsguild.org or on Facebook! Questions? Please contact Gallery Director, Savannah Thomas, at 706-279-3129 or savannaht@creativeartsguild.org.