TUSCUMBIA-The Tennessee Valley Museum of Art (TVMA) is hosting Perceptions: Four Contemporary Artists now through Sept. 17. The exhibition features work by Elaine Augustine, Laurie Maves, Tracie Noles-Ross, and Rachel Ann Wakefield. There will be an artist meet & greet with Augustine and Wakefield on Friday, Aug. 27 at 6 p.m.
Each of the four women artists in the show have displayed a body of work that reflects their artistic vision and style. Viewers walking through the museum will get to experience exploration with color, narrative, abstraction, and hyper-realism, through painting, sculpture, and mixed media.
Acclaimed local artist Elaine Augustine is showing her abstract oil paintings as part of the exhibition. Her work experiments with color and composition, and she says her abstract style allows her to “just paint from my heart!”
Laurie Maves is another abstract artist in the show, and her exhibition “Prayers for the Decade” features a series of large-scale paintings displayed dynamically by suspending them from the museum’s ceiling. Maves, a Masters level art therapist based in Florida, seeks not only to display her own work but to encourage others to paint therapeutically and as an avenue for spiritual connection. “I hope the viewer will experience an immersion of joy, focusing on the commonality of humanity’s crossover with divinity,” said Maves.
The exhibition takes a turn toward the strange and whimsical with Tracie Noles-Ross’s exhibition “More Tales From the Brambly Thicket.” Her sculptures and wall art are created with “discarded and forgotten objects (that) are charged with a new purpose, encoded with healing stories and used to encourage a shift in perspective.” Her fairy-tale-esque work features female figures along with southern flora and fauna, resulting in artworks that “feel a little shadowy and dark like the forest floor.”
Bright colors and realism dominate Rachel Ann Wakefield’s exhibition “Passage.” Wakefield says that this collection of work reflects how, “in the past year and a half, we have all become familiar with letting go of some, or much, of what we have thought to be certain.” The exhibition represents Wakefield’s artistic progression from her underwater paintings, a theme of her past work, to her newer pieces that are “focused on hyper-color, light, paint handling, and negative space.”
Museum hours are Tuesday-Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Masks are required inside the museum until further notice. Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for students, and free for TVAA members. Admission is also free for education, healthcare, and first responder workers, as part of our Arts for the Frontline program, sponsored by Bank Independent and E.S.
Robbins. To learn more about the Tennessee Valley Art Association, which runs the Tennessee
Valley Museum of Art and the Ritz Theatre, visit tennesseevalleyarts.org or call 256-383-0533.
Media Release/Jennifer Butler Keeton
Director of Public Affairs and Marketing
Tennessee Valley Art Association
