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(posted on 2 Jun 2011)
Juried art show celebrates celebrates Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgender Month
By F. ANDREW TAYLOR
VIEW STAFF WRITER
VIEW STAFF WRITER
Posted: May 24, 2011 | 8:36 a.m.
"The work didn't have to be about rainbows," said Denise Alvarado, gallery coordinator of Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, "a lthough a lot of rainbows ended up in the show."
The third annual Over the Rainbow juried art competition for adults and teens is on display through July 17 at the Sunrise Library, 5400 Harris Ave. The show and competition celebrates Gay, Lesbian, Bi-sexual and Transgender Month. Any media was eligible for the show, but the work was required to communicate the theme of a celebration of diversity, individuality and creativity in Southern Nevada.
"It's all about how the media was handled," Alvarado said, "the winners' best use of their media in the judge's opinion."
This year, that judge was Jeanne Voltura, gallery director for the city of Las Vegas. There were more submissions this year than in years past, and of the 56 pieces submitted, 35 made it into the show. Cash prizes are set to be awarded to five of the artists at a reception scheduled for 5 p.m. June 2 at the Sunrise Library. In addition to first-, second- and third-place prizes of $100, $75 and $50, respectively, two Best of Show awards of $125, one for adults and one for teens, are planned. Three honorable mention winners are set to receive ribbons.
"We always like to pull teens into our libraries and our library art galleries," Alvarado said. "Around half our submissions this year were from teens, which I'm very excited about. Teens also took half the awards."
The show has a wide variety of styles and media, from colored pencil to ceramics to large mixed-media works.
"When we put the show together, we realized that three members of the same household, all with different surnames, had made it into the show," Alvarado said. "We didn't realize that until we noticed they were all using the same phone number on their forms."
Teen Slade Brenner took third place for his colored pencil drawing titled "Frankly Speaking," while his mother, Elizabeth Bryan, garnered an honorable mention for her mixed-media assemblage, "Windows of Hope." Byron Keith Byrd's work is featured in the show, too.
"I'm the boy's godfather," said Byrd, a Summerlin-area resident. "We couldn't talk the other boy into showing this time, but his work is good enough that I believe it would have made the show."
Slade Brenner, 15, attends Las Vegas Academy, where he is studying theater and art. He was recently in a production of "The Crucible."
"Both Elizabeth and I are professional artists and writers," Byrd said. "I just had a piece accepted in a show at the Boca (Raton) Museum in Florida. We have a very creative household."
The adult Best of Show Award went to G. Kim Franz, for her quilt titled "Red Rock." Franz and her husband moved to the valley from Oregon about a year ago for the weather.
"I'm happy to be out of the rain," Franz said. "I fell in love when I saw Red Rock and had to capture it. I started the quilt about a month ago and finished it for the show."
Franz has been sewing since she was 3 and competitively quilting for 11 years. Although she has won many awards for her quilts over the years, this is the first competition she has won in the valley.
Franz had an art studio in Oregon and is currently teaching a watercolor class for the city of Las Vegas at the Howard Lieburn Senior Center. She also has taught classes in several instruments and is a folk singer who opened for Joan Baez and Bob Dylan in the '60s and opened for and performed with magician Doug Henning.
"I was really impressed with the show," Franz said of the "Over the Rainbow" exhibit. "It's nice to win when the competition is good."
Contact Sunrise and Whitney View reporter F. Andrew Taylor at ataylor@viewnews.com or 380-4532.
'Over the Rainbow' Winners Best of Show/Adult: G. Kim Franz, "Red Rock" quilt Best of Show/Teen: Taylor Voss, "Natures Edge" photo First Place: Shari Bray, "Shadow Snail Puppet" raku Second Place: Sophia Akhtar, "Love Bug" photo Third Place: Slade Brenner, "Frankly Speaking" colored pencil Honorable Mentions: Natasha Culbreth, "Through Jaded Eyes" Photoshop painting Gary Wu, "Birds and Flowers" painting Elizabeth Bryan, "Window of Hope" mixed-media assemblage
(posted on 2 Jun 2011)
http://www.lvrj.com/view/-celebrating-life-122925828.html
'Celebrating Life!'
- VIEW STAFF
Posted: Jun. 1, 2011 | 12:15 a.m.
The work of area senior artists is on display in the 2011 "Celebrating Life!" juried exhibition through June 30 in the Charleston Heights Arts Center, 800 S. Brush St.
Each year, the city of Las Vegas Arts Commission and the city of Las Vegas sponsor the fine arts competition to recognize the talents of Las Vegas-area artists 50 or older. Award-winning pieces from the 2011 "Celebrating Life!" exhibit are scheduled to travel to the City Hall Bridge Gallery to be shown July 7 through Aug. 25. Artists whose works were not selected may have the option to display their work in the Salon de Refusés exhibit in the Charleston Heights Arts Center Gallery through June 8.
2011 Winners
This year's competition winners are:
Best of Show: Herb Russel for "Midwest Farmer."
Drawing and Pastel: First place David Mazur for "Dandelions," second place Pat Kuramoto for "One Casual Day," third place Scott Vandermolen for "Afternoon Nap" and honorable mention Peg Lozier for "A Bird in the Hand."
Painting (Oils-Acrylics): First place Carol Biering Hendrix for "A Fight to the Finish," second place Jane Marquez for "Radiant Light," third place Earl T. Dunbar for "Down Home" and honorable mention Leslie Fox for Red Rock Canyon Trail.
Mixed Media: First place Albert Lewis "Buddy" Bailey for "It's Show Time," second place Rainer "RB" Bertrams for "Bassman Blues," third place Margaret A. Geary for "Let the Games Begin" and honorable mention Lincoln Maynard for "Stages."
Photography: First place Kristin Pinkerton for "Red Hot," second place A. J. Schreiner for "Yuma Territorial Prison," third place Diana Petersen for "Star Trails at Fly Geyser" and honorable mention Jim Morehouse for "Lily White."
Sculpture: First place Shari Bray for "Ibis," second place Wes Whitmyer for "Galaxy," third place Scott Sturman for "Dots of Infinity" and honorable mention Dorothy Rutledge for "Sand and Sea."
Watercolor: First place W. F. Hill for "Pacific N.W. Boatyard," second place Myra Oberman for "Ain't Misbehavin'," third place Martine Patton for "Heading Out" and honorable mention Richard Ramsdell for "Industrial Maze."
The best of show winner receives $500 plus a plaque. First-place winners receive $250 plus a plaque, second-place winners receive $150 plus a plaque and third-place winners receive $100 plus a plaque. Honorable mention winners receive a plaque.
For more information, call 229-4631 or 229-1012.
(posted on 17 Feb 2011)
In the November 4-10, 2010 Issue of Seven Magazine, my show and work were mentioned. Please see link: http://digitaleditiononline.com/publication/?i=51653
The mention was listed for Tuesday, November 9th and noted (along with an image of "Crouching"):
"Removing a fired pot from a kiln while it's still hot can result in cracks or a crumbled piece of pottery. However, artists using the Japanes firing process called raku have learned to control this fracturing to create unique pieces that look like they've been around for centuries. Local artist Shari Bray has developed her own technique, creating ceramics by drawing, painting or lightly carving pieces with a lace-like pattern. Check out her work, Figurative Works in Raku, starting today at the Summerlin Library, 1771 Inner Circle Drive. Visit LVCCLD.org for more information."
(posted on 1 Feb 2011)
Please see the article written about the Sunrise Library Show at URL:
The article notes:
Ceramic statements
Artist embraces unpredictability, challenge of raku
By F. ANDREW TAYLOR
VIEW STAFF WRITER
  F. ANDREW TAYLOR/VIEWShari Bray?s exhibit of raku works is set to be on display through July 3 at the Sunrise Library, 5400 Harris Ave.  F. ANDREW TAYLOR/VIEWShari Bray?s shadow puppet piece titled "The Goat" is crafted using an American style of raku. |
At first glance the works on display in the gallery at the Sunrise Library look like simple black and white figure drawings. It's only on close examination that the works' real nature is revealed. The nude figure and hand studies are ceramic, using the ancient Japanese technique of raku.
Local artist Shari Bray studied ceramics and painting in college but didn't try to make a career of it for 30 years.
"Nobody was beating down my door to be an artist, so I took a job at the first place that would hire me, which was an insurance agency," Bray said.
When she moved to Las Vegas in the '90s, she met up with local ceramic artists and kept her hand in the art for nearly 20 years. In October 2008 she quit her job and decided it was time to pursue the dream of being an artist. Since then, she has participated in several group shows, but the show at the library is her first solo.
Her medium, raku, is a Japanese firing technique developed in the 1500s for the tea ceremony. The ceramic work is fired to bisque, creating a solid piece of ceramic, but it's a rough and not completely watertight ceramic. Glaze, a substance that hardens to glass during a second firing, is applied. The kiln, the oven used in the process, is heated to between 1,600 and 1,850 degrees, depending on the type of glaze to be used. The piece is removed red hot from the kiln and either air-cooled or immersed in water.
"In Japan they would use a wood-fire kiln, so there would be ash and other things that chemically affect the atmosphere in the kiln," Bray said.
The result would be a piece with shiny, often light-colored glaze contrasted with the unglazed portions, which become a rich, sooty, black color. Raku didn't really make a splash in the States until the '60s, but Americans tended to use gas kilns, which created a cleaner atmosphere in the kiln and didn't create the raku effect.
"As I understand it, the American raku technique was discovered by accident by Paul Soldner when a pot fell over on something that burned and he noticed it," Bray said. "Now we take the red-hot pots out of the kiln, put them into something that burns -- like sawdust, leaves or paper -- and after a few seconds cover it up. It smokes and smolders and the carbon impregnates any of the clay that doesn't have glaze on it."
In order to create her pieces, Bray has to paint the image in reverse, painting white glaze and leaving bare clay to become the black lines. It's a process she finds both frustrating and invigorating.
"It's kind of tricky," Bray said between laughs. "Raku is probably a good medium for a masochist, because there's just so many things that can go wrong. The pieces are brought to temperature extraordinarily quickly. I bring it up to 1,800 degrees in about half an hour. When I take the red-hot pieces out, often I'm quenching them in water in under 15 minutes. Some of the pieces are lost to thermal shock."
Bray has learned to minimize that problem, but she added that the number of variables that are out of the artist's hand are enormous.
"Your glaze could be affected by the amount of humidity in the air or whatever you're burning it in," Bray said. "The one thing I tell people is that you don't fall in love with a raku piece until it's done and cleaned up. There are just too many things that could go wrong."
Bray's exhibition of raku pieces is scheduled to be on display in the gallery of the Sunrise Library at 5400 Harris Ave. through July 3. The gallery is free and open to the public during regular library hours from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday through Sunday. For more information, call 507-3900.
Contact Sunrise and Whitney View reporter F. Andrew Taylor at ataylor@viewnews.com or 380-4532.
(posted on 16 Jun 2010)
Check this out! It's a video of me doing raku. A reporter from the View asked if he could come over and video the process. I was delighted to show him and now you can see it too! After clicking on the link below select "Raku Ceramics" from the "Recent Videos" list.