New art exhibits on display
By Melanie Fenstermaker
staff writer
Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, or NEHMA, celebrated the opening of two new art exhibits at a reception Friday night.
The exhibits, “Black Mountain College” and “Relational Forms,” will be available for public view until Feb. 28. The exhibits were put together by the museum’s director, Katie Lee Koven, and two interns: Nick Danielson, museum intern and masters of fine art ceramics student, and Windgate Museum intern Adriane Dalton.
The goal of this exhibit, according to Koven, is “to bring more understanding and more recognition about Black Mountain College, about its influence in American History and its influence on craft design in the United States, even into the American West.”
Each artist with work on display in these exhibits was a part of, or had some affiliation with, Black Mountain College.
Black Mountain College was an experimental liberal arts college open from 1933-1957. The artists associated with the college have been influential in many art disciplines; including poetry, weaving, ceramics, painting, architecture, and others. The exhibit includes the art of figures such as Josef Albers, Ruth Asawa, and R. Buckminster Fuller.
The second exhibit, “Relational Forms,” displays the work of Anna Campbell Bliss and her husband, Robert Bliss. Anna Campbell Bliss used elements from math, exploration of color and form, and other processes to create her art. Some of her works are computer-generated.
Koven said Anna Campbell Bliss’ use of “traditional and nontraditional” processes of making art connects well with the Black Mountain College exhibit.
There is one other exhibit on display in NEHMA, titled “Enchanted Modernities: Mysticism, Landscape, and the American West.” This features artists who portrayed the American West landscape with inspiration from theosophical ideas. This exhibit will be on display until Dec. 10.
NEHMA is open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., one more day per week than last year.
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