Quartette Art Show Opens at Level One
(Crystal A. Proxmire, 12/5/2011)
Four artists. One show. That was the idea behind the Quartette Art Show, which opened at Level One Bank’s Gallery (922635 Woodward) on Dec.2. Four artists from the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center (BBAC) took part in the whimsical show, which will remain up through the end of the year.
Artists Colleen Sanders, Loretta Markell and Janet McCall Rimar were on hand to talk about their work, while Dave Hines was out of town.
The most prominent piece in the room was the sculpture of the male torso created by Colleen Sanders. “I just love it,” Sanders said. “You ever just have a piece that you really like? For me this is it.” Sanders had done drawing for years, and got away from it when she had children. “Once they were older I wanted to try something new, so I thought I would try sculpture and I’ve just kept on making stuff since.” Along one window, Sanders’ smaller sculptures make a whimsical line of characters, led by the empty-eyed, wrinkled bust of a man in the final stages of life. “I made the head of my dad after a visit with him. I was struck with how lost he was, and I needed a way to express it,” Sanders said. In addition to being an artist, Sanders teaches a class at BBAC called Discover Color, which is an introductory class about color theory.
Loretta Markell of China Township does mixed media painting, sculpture and collage. Her work has been featured at the Mt. Clemens Art House and she has a piece in the St. Clair County Building. She began taking art classes in 1975, working up to a BA and an MFA with a focus on painting from Wayne State University. The desire to paint came in the 80s when she was a volunteer docent at the Detroit Institute of Arts. “I loved learning about art at the DIA, and all the art history. When I saw (Henri) Matisse I thought, I want to do that,” she said. In her pretty painting titled “Picture with Yogi,” Markell has created a fantasy image based off an old photograph of herself. “There was a picture of me sitting like that and it sort of looked like I was meditating,” she said. “I added birds and creatures that are symbols of soul-spirits. I’ve always added cats and bird into the things I’m doing.”
This was Janet McCall Rimar’s first public show. “It’s a lot harder than I thought,” she said about the experience. “It was hard going through the house and trying to decide what I wanted to show, and what would fit in the space. We have four people in one space so we had to make everything fit,” she said. McCall Rimar’s paintings grace the walls of the Level One Bank Gallery, while an interesting sculpture made of “junk”and a ceramic body, fits nicely in the window. “There’s no theme to my work,” she said. “You know how artists are, we make stuff.”
Level One Bank is a branch of a small locally-owned bank with locations limited to the Metro Detroit Area. The large, brightly-lit front half of the building is used as a community art space, with shows changing every month to every few months. To learn more about Level One go to http://www.levelonebanking.com/home.aspx. For more on the BBAC, go to http://www.bbartcenter.org/.