Art Gallery

Five members of the Atlanta Collage Society will be featured in the Art Gallery during November and December. If you ask “What is collage?” be prepared to experience a whole new way of appreciating color, shape, and substance in art.

Collage is a technique, primarily used in the visual arts, where the artwork is an assemblage of different materials, thus creating a new whole. A collage may include newspaper clippings, ribbons, bits of colored or handmade papers, portions of other artwork, texts, photographs, or other found objects, glued to a piece of paper or canvas. The origins of collage can be traced back hundreds of years, but the technique made a dramatic reappearance in the early 20th century. The term “collage” was coined by cubists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in the beginning of the 20th century when it became recognizable as modern art.

These artists will show:
Joyce Vroon
Arlene Brass
Mary Howe Derbes
Veva Dunckel
Barbara J. Dunham

Charley Kelso is a well-known Atlanta oil painter who will be the featured artist in the Art Gallery during September and October. He and his wife Margaret have been UUCA members since 1963. Here’s what Charley has to say about himself:

For 40 years I was a labor lawyer based in Atlanta, and for 25 of those years, I worked as a weekend pecan farmer. I loved both jobs. Now, for the last 12 years, my principal endeavor has been oil painting—and I love that, too.

I paint regularly at the Chastain Art Center and sometimes at the Atlanta Artists Center or en plein air locally. Painting is such a great excuse to travel. My daughter, a medical illustrator, goes painting with me and I have a retired painter buddy in Oklahoma who likes to travel and paint as much as I do. Sometimes we’ll take a workshop, but usually we just rent a car and drive down the road until we are moved to paint something we see.

My goal is that my paintings will stir a good feeling in viewers. Almost everyone gets a good feeling from standing near a body of water, or in a group of people or things they know. Maybe something in my paintings can stir a similar good feeling. I don’t paint screams or misfortunes. I do paint bad weather and grizzled old men, because both give me good feelings. I love the Impressionist paintings for their liberal use of paint and colors. Close inspection of a Monet painting reveals that almost every square millimeter is a different color or value from the next. I strive for that mastery of color and value. If people get as much enjoyment from viewing my paintings as I get from creating them, I’ll feel fulfilled.

Charley’s work will be showing for two months, September and October. Enjoy the show.

Like people, congregations have many reasons to incorporate art into their worship and learning programs, adding beauty, enrichment and renewal.

The Northwest Art Gallery encourages art appreciation that enriches our members, friends and guests spiritually. Its presence increases the attractiveness of our facilities, encourages and highlights our many in-house artists, and it attracts newcomers to the congregation, both artists and art viewers.

The Gallery occupies a moderately sized meeting room and the hallway leading to that room in the congregation’s Sanctuary Building. Exhibitions show for two months. On the second Sunday of each show, an art reception after service gives the congregation the opportunity to greet the artist(s), ask questions and express appreciation.