Featured Artists – Gary Bradley, Emily Rubin Malpass, Mark Plaga, Carol Joy Shannon, & Yuko Nogami Taylor

Gary Bradley

After thirty six years in the non-profit world with a focus on serving people I discovered that through art I am able to continue my life passions of making life better for others. Through painting I am able to be about the call of drawing others to original beauty, truth and goodness. This congruence of gifting and calling opened new doors to find beauty in every place and to point others in that direction.   I create beauty with the hope that in the making of something it passes into the hearts of the viewer. In order to see beauty one must become interior to the work and enter into its radiant space and spell.  To quote a phrase of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Earths crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God: and only he who sees, takes off his shoes.”  Seeing has consumed me as I seek to see and express through my painting the beauty of the ordinary, the true and the suffering of the cosmos and all its expressions.  In  Ms Barrets words I have removed my shoes.

Emily Rubin Malpass

While sculpting this series of fishlike shapes from altered wheel-thrown porcelain cylinders, the lines of the forms reminded me of punctuation: the comma, parenthesis, ampersand, ellipsis…and the way these symbols bring unity to disparate thoughts, words and phrases in our written language. Just as punctuation is the underpinning of language and written communication, so these curves and pierced dots tether together the shapes in this series. This idea of connection and communication led me to think about my connections to and communication with the people in my life, and the way these small, undulating porcelain pieces are like these relationships: fragile under pressure, something I create but don’t totally control, stronger after undergoing an intense, heated process, and more alike than different. I’m also reminded of an idea Cynthia Bringle tells ceramists–only fire work that you love, because it will be around forever once you do. In the same way, even when my connections with others shift and fade, the echo of the experience remains. I hope these works will connect to you in some way, and give you pause about the beauty and permanence of your connections in the world.

Mark Plaga

Carol Joy Shannon

Inspired by the art scene in Raleigh, Carol Joy Shannon started painting abstracts. In her fifties and self-taught, her paintings won commissions and awards, got juried into shows and made sales.  So she kept at it, honing her skills and finding her voice.

Seven years later, Carol Joy’s work is in public and private collections throughout the eastern United States, Europe, Brazil and Japan. Her paintings have been on exhibit at Visual Art Exchange, United Arts Council of Raleigh, Page Walker Art Center, Asino Cotto in Rome, featured in the Exchange Gallery, with solo shows at United Arts Council, 311 West Martin, and chosen for the inaugural Artists Challenge exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art (Nov 2009 to April 2010).  Carol Joy participates in the Southeastern Wildlife Expo in Charleston, SC, Artsplosure, Lazy Daze, Festifall and Boylan Heights Artwalk, and she is a member of Visual Art Exchange, the Fine Arts League of Cary, and a founding member of the Chromazones.

Carol Joy works in acrylic and mixed media on canvas and wood, and has married her favorite elements of abstraction, drafting and wildlife into a style uniquely hers.

Yuko Nogami Taylor

As I was growing up in busy Tokyo, visual stimulation gave me peace of mind.  Today, I live in the southern United States, and I use all aspects of my life as subjects for my paintings.  The desire to express myself erupted after living in the United States and struggling to communicate for six or seven years.  In many ways, my representation of painting American and Japanese cultures is completely organic.

I became fascinated with African-American experience, culture and history.  Through my personal experiences with those whom I consider the builders of this country, I fell in love with rare old photos of nameless people. They were slaves or their descendants.  I contemplated the strength of their lives and searched for an answer to my question of why I am here and what is my purpose.  Giving colour to the past and putting life back into those lives encourages me to paint.

I desire to celebrate the life of people who lived their given lives as humble, strong, and beautiful human beings.  I am fascinated and thankful for the powerful affect of the gift of time and space, to our memories.