Artists’ reception will be Friday, October 19 from 5–8 pm at Southside Gallery. The exhibition will be on display through October 27, 2018.
Blair Hobbs likes to find weird surprises in the mundane. Primarily, she finds bright oddities in plants, animals, and the human body. Each canvas is a box of assembled visual cues that form an imagined narrative, and many of those narratives range from bittersweet (or just bitter) to humorous. Each drawing is a paper cut-out glued or sewn to canvas. Other materials include acrylic paints, colored pencils, ink, mulberry papers, sequins, glitter, thread, gold dust, duct tape, candy wrappers, stolen placemats, and broken Christmas tree balls. Hobbs has an MFA in Poetry from the University of Michigan and teaches undergraduate Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. She lives in Oxford, MS, with her husband, John T Edge and son, Jess.
Adrienne Brown-David was born in St. Louis, MO. She began drawing at a very young age. Her passion for art was consistently nurtured by her family. She began taking extracurricular art classes at the age of 12. These classes consisted of everything from pottery to photography. For much of her life, graphite was the main focus of her art. After a brief stint at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a short return to St. Louis, Adrienne relocated to St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. It was here that she began to focus on painting and mixed media. Adrienne Brown-David currently works from her home studio in Water Valley, where she resides with her husband, Taariq and their four daughters.
Lee Harper, a self “described history nerd,” veers toward the macabre and obscure of human customs and stories. Using the skeletal form as the great equalizer along with a manipulation of the natural world, Harper playfully addresses death and mortality. Harper is an artist in Oxford, Mississipi and lives with her husband, son, dogs, cat and several chickens.
Jack Barbera came to Oxford in 1976 to work as an Assistant Professor in the Ole Miss English Department. In 1993 he began taking courses in the Art Department under Ron Dale. After retiring in 2011, he took another two semesters of ceramics at Ole Miss under Matt Long. Barbera has exhibited his work at Lafayette County Library, Oxford, Mississippi; Bozarts Gallery, Water Valley, MS; and Hickory Museum of Art, North Carolina.