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Guest Artist

October 2019: Carol Myers

October 4October 25, 2019

KBAC Gallery
Opens October 4 during Art Hop
6:00 to 9:00 p.m.

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Carol L. Myers grew up in Baltimore, where she went to nursing school at the Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing. Her first job as an RN took her to Ann Arbor, MI. The atmosphere of the college town inspired her to follow her longtime interest in art at the University of Michigan, where she earned her BFA in Printmaking. Since graduation she has mixed art, nursing, marriage and family.

Myers resided in Indianapolis, IN from1980 until 2012. While in Indiana, she was active at the Indianapolis Art Center as a student, teacher and department chair. She was a Docent at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, as well as a curator at the Cultural Complex of the Indianapolis Art Center, the StutzArtSpace Gallery at the Stutz Business Center, and the Stutz Artists Association Partnership with Clarian Hospitals. She has shown in many national and regional shows, and has prints in several museum collections. She was awarded an Individual Artist Grant from the Indiana Arts Commission in 2000 and served on their grant review panel in 2001.

 Since 2012 she has maintained a Studio and residence in Southwestern Michigan, becoming active in the community and the Berrien County Artists Association. She is a member of the Women's Caucus for the Arts (MI, IN, Chicago), FUSEDChicago, Southwest Michigan Printmakers, International Encaustic Artists, Encaustic Art Institute, Baren Forum, The Studio Art Quilters Association and the Surface Design Association. She teaches encaustic and printmaking classes at the Kirk Newman Art School at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art as well as  serving on the Board of the South Haven Center for the Art, chairing their exhibition committee and serving as volunteer curator.

My work explores the internal landscape of spirit. Meditative pencil drawings explore the natural objects that fascinate me: shells, bones, fossils, bare trees and roots...the architecture of nature. These explorations form my personal constellation of image and meaning, and my work spins off from here, becoming richer with time and repetition.

The drawings lay the foundation for my more complex studio work. Encaustic monotypes are created by drawing on a heated surface with pigmented beeswax, and then placing paper face down on the surface to transfer the colored wax to the paper. I start with a pencil drawing, sometimes complex and sometimes simple. The hot wax and receptive paper surface interact to create veils of color and texture that create a sense of depth and mystery. Responding to the print, it goes face up on the heated surface to accept more mark making with pencil, charcoal, oil pastel and more colored wax. Warm wax loves to accept and incorporate the marks and colors into its protective layer, cooling to a protective shield. The shapes and symbols from my drawings appear, and I pay special attention to edges and intersections with color and mark making. Many of these images reference mandalas with the circle within the square-cosmic diagrams for meditation and contemplation. 

The work invites the viewer into connection with spirit. Intimate and meditative, it creates a sacred space for contemplation. I have always believed in the healing nature of art, weaving creative expression into the fabric of my life. That belief has transformed into a deep knowing that art heals. The process of creation heals me, and I send that healing out into the world with my art.