THE NEIGHBORHOOD SHOW AT SIGNS OF LIFE GALLERY
Eight Artists Find Inspiration in a Common Place

This exhibition at Signs of Life Gallery features over 60 paintings, prints, drawings and photographs by eight artists. Paul Hotvedt, Justin Marable, Rick Mitchell, John Reeves, Elizabeth Rowley, Deb Schroer, Heather Smith Jones, and Mark Weber show the visual beauty and significance found in four Lawrence neighborhoods.
The Neighborhood Show opens with a free, public reception
from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Friday, February 9th.

For this show, the artists have created a variety of work related especially to the neighborhood theme. From drawings that form an illustrated journal of daily life to architectural photographs of monumental public buildings, The Neighborhood Show gives the viewer a tour of Lawrence’s common life where private and public interests intersect. “The pieces in the show work together to create a visual conversation offering questions and statements about our developing identity as a community,” says Gallery Director James Schaefer.

>> Recent Lawrence Journal World News Article on Show <<

About the Artists:

Paul Hotvedt
“The 5x5" paintings give me a chance to make paintings on the spot around my house and in the yard. There are a number of subjects in those places that I've been meaning to get to for awhile and I've stopped putting it off. With a portable, customized paint box I can create still-lives from things around the house here in East Lawrence or paint in the garden. Work in the landscape beyond my neighborhood continues apace.”

Justin Marable
“Lawrence is a progressive city that holds onto its past and is conscious of its present. It bears its rural underside while continually reinventing itself as an urban center of vibrant culture. In my serigraphs of the city, each structure corresponds to either residential, industrial, recreational, or civil sectors of town. These sectors merge together to create function, and in effect form community. With the medium of serigraphy, or screen printing, I can rework my photography and evoke changing atmosphere within the surrounding skies by using monoprint, paper, and photographic stencil techniques.”

Rick Mitchell
Rick Mitchell has been a professional artist/photographer since 1974. He taught photography at Rutgers University for 18 years and has also taught photojournalism at the University of Kansas and the History of Photography at Baker University. He is currently Gallery Director at the Lawrence Arts Center, a position he has held since 1993. Rick has worked “in the neighborhood” for long portions of his life. A native of Lawrence, he has over the years discovered much about his hometown by walking through neighborhoods a leisurely and meditative practice he still enjoys. Photographing along the way is a natural extension of this practice which he describes as “like collecting, but without removing anything from its place.” During the 1990’s Rick was twice employed by the City of Lawrence to photograph Lawrence buildings listed on the National Historic Register.

John Reeves
For The Neighborhood, John Reeves has chosen the familiar territory of East Lawrence between office and home as his subject. In this space between work and home, the everyday margins of the street are memorialized and transformed to become artifacts worthy of reverie and celebration. The color photographs in this show are a departure from his previous body of black and white photographs that he has been making since 2002 with simple medium format (toy and pinhole) film cameras.

Elizabeth Rowley
North Lawrence Series: 9th and Locust – “I am a native Kansan and have always appreciated the vast beauty of my home state. Lawrence has the advantage of farmland surrounding it. The north Lawrence neighborhood view of the spatial countryside beckoned me to paint it.”

Kaw River Series: River View from the 2nd Street Bridge – “I cross the bridge daily back and forth to work and I am constantly reminded of the natural beauty that Lawrence has to offer...The Kaw River reflects the changing of the Kansas seasons beautifully which is why I chose to paint it.”

Deb Schroer
Deb Schroer lives in the heart of the Flint Hills near Strong City, Kansas. Her inspiration to paint comes from experiencing firsthand the beauty of the landscape. Her paintings are a symbol of the love she has for the land, its people, and for everyday life.

Heather Smith Jones
“The new pieces I have in the Neighborhood Show are selections from three different journal-like series. These drawings expose internal conflicts and dichotomies and express a need for hope, endurance, and reconstruction. The images and writings illustrate ideas of community, falling down and building up, loss and grace, and waiting with hope.”

Mark Weber
There is a joy that infuses me as I translate what I see into images I can share with others. My eyes are on a relentless quest to discover visions that celebrate beauty in the common, power in weakness, joy in adversity and to catch a glimpse of the ever-present mysteries that wash over us.

Though I paint a wide variety of subject matter, I have, for the most part, painted within a representational style. Whether working from life or from photos I have taken, I begin washing in the most basic shapes of light and dark then proceed to refining the drawing and introduce more exact colors. Once satisfied with the composition and drawing, I focus on painting increasingly smaller areas of color and dark and light in the proper relationships to one another. I just keep painting away until I have achieved the degree of color, balance and detail that expresses what I am seeking.

Though art has been a major driving force in my life, it must be content to remain as a secondary component; God, family and an attempt to serve others is at the core of who I am and my art follows as the expression of and a means to share my perspective of life with others.