MyScapes with Robert Blunk and Featuring Luc-Alain Fiedler, Susannah Hart Thomer and Helene Halstuch 3/9/19

MyScapes with Robert Blunk and Featuring Luc-Alain Fiedler, Susannah Hart Thomer and Helene Halstuch 3/9/19

Lone Point, enamel on board, Robert Blunk
Lone Point, enamel on board, Robert Blunk

Artists' Reception: 3/9 from 6-8 pm (Exhibition 3/9-3/30)  Featuring renowned Folk Artist Robert Blunk and Also Featuring Award-winning artists: Luc-Alain Fiedler, Susannah Hart Thomer and Helene Halstuch.   

Robert Blunk was born in 1923 in Salyards, Kansas. After serving in the Pacific with the Marine Corps in World War II, he returned home to Kansas and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Kansas City Institute of the Arts in 1950. For over 40 years, he had a notable teaching career combined with an active career of creating public sculptures, designs and installations.

A consistent exploration of space and color is evidenced in both his two-dimensional and three-dimensional work. Blunk is drawn to seascapes and landscapes and permutations of the two, figurative and abstract. There is an element of the spiritual that permeates some pieces. His interests - as far ranging as Egyptian art to the Wright Brothers - earn witty or overt reference.

Blunk admires the works of artists ranging from Alexander Calder to David Smith and George Nakashima, and include Paul Klee, Van Gogh and outsider artists. In his most recent body of work, he draws inspiration from Matisse, Marsden Hartley and Van Gogh.

Luc-Alain Fiedler is an award-winning sculptor with an M.F.A. from the University of California in sculpture and intaglio printmaking with additional studies in Belgium, England, France, and Italy. He has an extensive background in metal fabrication and bronze casting.  His sculptures are collected widely  both privately and publicly.  Recent awards include "Best in Show" at VRMC's National Juried Exhibit, First Place at the 26th Annual North American Exhibit of Miniatures, and Honorable Mention at the 84th Annual International Exhibition of Fine Art in Miniature.
 
Recent works "explore the relationships between the physical and metaphysical world." Many of the elements within the compositions are either found in nature or have man-made connotations. These suggestive forms are derived from his studies and interests in all sciences, ranging from the microcosm to the macrocosm. They are then realized through various processes such as; etching and collagraph printmaking, forging, foundry, and fabrication methods. Luc works out of his studio and foundry in Unionville, Maryland.

Susannah Hart Thomer is a celebrated watercolor artist who has won a number of awards in local and national watercolor exhibitions.  She's illustrated children’s books, was recently featured in an 8-page article in American Artist Magazine, belongs to several art leagues and currently volunteers as editor for the American Watercolor Society (AWS). Susannah says her personal experimentation and involvement with the community and family of fellow artists keep her refreshed, replenished, and energized.

Helene Halstuch studied fine art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY, and received her BFA from the Central School of Art, London, England in 1977 and did her graduate work at the London University of Education. 

Helene lived in England and France for twenty years where she exhibited extensively before returning to the United States in 1995.  Helene's Landscape and Still Life paintings, in addition to her Monotypes, are expressive in their use of light and are reminiscent of Bonnard, Van Gogh and Cezanne.  Helene currently paints in the Lot River Valley in South West France near Cahors, where she resides part of the year.