Juliette Aristides & Alan LeQuire: The Figure in Charcoal & Terra Cotta
Orgain & Bruner Galleries, Customs House Museum and Cultural Center
Clarksville, Tennessee
On view through January 28, 2024
https://customshousemuseum.org
The Customs House Museum & Cultural Center is presenting the exhibition “Juliette Aristides & Alan LeQuire: The Figure in Charcoal & Terra Cotta.” As the title suggests, these gifted artists are devoted to exploring the human form in different materials. They started exhibiting together 12 years ago at Nashville’s LeQuire Gallery & Studio, and each has been the focus of a solo show at the Customs House, so this season’s project — featuring older and newer works — makes a logical next step.
LeQuire, the creator of the monumental Athena Parthenos for the Parthenon in Nashville, is one of Tennessee’s most iconic sculptors. Renowned for his monumental public sculpture, most recently the “Dream Forest” installation at Nashville’s Four Seasons Hotel & Residences, LeQuire is powerfully inspired by terra cotta, which was used by the Etruscans to represent real people and — almost magically — preserves the artist’s touch after it is fired. (Sometimes we can see the fingerprints left by an artist who lived thousands of years ago.)
LeQuire explains, “When I work in natural clay, I feel connected to the entire history of sculpture-making around the world. This is the primary way we know about most of those early cultures, through their clay sculpture — because it lasts. Clay is found everywhere and is inexpensive, but once fired it offers permanence. In this way, earth is the humblest medium, but also the noblest.”
Aristides is an accomplished Seattle-based artist who seeks to understand and convey the human spirit through her work. Recently immersed in teaching at the Florence Academy of Art in Italy and at its New Jersey outpost, Aristides has been experimenting with flatness and form in her latest drawings — in charcoal on paper and in charcoal with oil on panel.
“Drawing is among the most innately human activities,” she notes. “It is an immediate art form considered to be as natural and close as thought itself.”
View more fine art gallery exhibitions here at FineArtConnoisseur.com. And, browse art video workshops and books by Juliette Aristides at PaintTube.tv.
