Calling All Artists

Call to Artists!

“No one sleeps in this room without the dream of a common language.”

The current show at the OBP Community Art Gallery officially ends on 31^st December, and the new show will start in the middle of January (probably the weekend of the 21^st), and will be up for 6 months. I hope you will all have new (or old) work to contribute to the new show.

To find inspiration for this next one I looked through my book shelves, and what jumped out at me was Adrienne Rich's “The Dream of a Common Language,” and I wondered, Is there such a thing? Can there be such a thing? We all function within a private, personal, unique mythology that intersects, interacts, confronts, and contradicts the shared mythologies of our time and place, as well as the unique mythologies of other individuals, and those of the past. Can we connect and communicate? What common ideas and symbols can we use to do that? What codes are buried in those symbols, and how do we decrypt them? Diego Rivera said that art is a universal language; in a room full of paintings and visual art, is there a better chance of mutual understanding, than if we all, say, wrote poetry? Does adding language to a visual piece make its meaning clearer, or more obscure?

It's an interesting thing to think about, and I invite you all to contemplate and to make work upon these themes and questions, and to use language as part of your piece, if you like. Representative, figurative, or abstract is all acceptable. All media is welcome: paint, collage, mosaic, photography, prints (as primary medium) and as always, we have spots for wall-mounted or standing sculpture. Work will be due on Friday, January 13^th, at OBP Gallery in North Bend, but I will want to see what you've got as it gets done, via email at OBPGallery@gmail.com. A reception date will be announced when we're closer to the time.

We hung about 75 pieces in this last show, in both the main room and the conference room, of all sizes and shapes. The high walls (20') in the main room mean that we can take, and in fact need, large-scale works, so if you are so inclined, go big! It might be a good idea to let me know if you're measuring your prospective canvas in feet rather than inches so I can get a sense of how many to expect, but if you've seen the space, you know how perfect it is for large canvases, and that we can't really have too many.

Please pass this on to other artists, and have fun! Feel free to email or call me if you have questions. If you haven't seen the current show, you're really missing out. It's just gorgeous, and very interesting.

See you all soon!

Tracy