Sally Terrell Smith, “Eve Discards The Fig Leaves”
Silver Street Studios
August 27, 2016
Artist Talks
Martin Holmes, Matt Adams, Paula Powers and Sally Smith gave short talks about their work.
Martin Holmes has been working hard perfecting camera techniques and toddler techniques to make memorable close-up portraits of children 8 to 18 months old. He judges success by their eyes, which are detailed and beautiful.
Martin made these archival pigment prints on pearl metal paper. Matt Adams remarked that they look like classical silver gel prints. Martin Holmes is now ready to accept commissioned portraits.
Matt Adams talked about his delight in making collages. When he went on to talk about how he placed the artwork for the exhibit, Eric Hagen or Martin Holmes pointed out that he had made a giant collage of the art. This was a new insight for Matt and struck all of the attendees as a valuable one. One of Matt’s collages in this show has sold, and one is still available.
Paula Powers explained the layering of her digital collages. She got started by taking online courses with many participants from all over the world from Sebastian Martins. In “Bikes All in a Row” she captured the bikes on a holiday morning, added layers of background, and removed the color of every image in the collage except the red of the bicycles,
Sally Terrell Smith discussed why Eve looks as she does in “Eve Discards The Fig Leaves”: mixed race, pregnant, in shock. Then she gave a show-and-tell of things that have helped her along the way, such as the encouragement her ceramics teacher gave her when he took her first small handmade pot home and fired it in his wood-fired kiln. She commended VAA’s Third Monday critiques, educational programs, and four annual juried exhibitions.