BEST OF THE WEST
May 15, 2015 - Joy Reed Belt
For Immediate Release
May 14, 2015
Contact: Joy Reed Belt
405.528.6336
EVENTS:
OPENING RECEPTION:
Friday, June 5, 2015
6:00-10:00 p.m.
BEST OF THE WEST
“Best of the West,” a powerful exhibition of three nationally recognized artists, Joe Andoe, Billy Schenck, and Bert Seabourn, who paint the essence of the American Southwest, will open on Friday, June 5, 2015, at 6:00 p.m. at JRB Art at The Elms in the Paseo Arts District. The exhibit will also be featured during the Gallery’s annual Prix de West Brunch on Sunday, June 14, 2015 from 10:30 am to 1:30 pm. Both events are free and open to the public. These exhibits will be on display through June 27, 2015.
A solo painting of a large white horse, by Joe Andoe, which measure 72” high and 142” wide, will be featured in JRB’s Broadmoor Gallery. Andoe, who is part Cherokee, was born into a farming family in Tulsa. He earned an MFA from the University of Oklahoma and has lived and worked in New York since 1985. His simple and elegant images of animals and landscapes and the soulful sensitivity in the interpretations of his subjects refer to his roots in the Great Plains. Andoe’s paintings are represented in the permanent collections of: the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Museum of Fine Art, Boston; and the San Diego Museum of Contemporary.
Billy Schenck lived and worked in New York City in the 1970’s amid Andy Warhol’s entourage and the Pop Art scene. While there Western movie stills inspired a series of paintings that catapulted Schenck to fame. Appropriating “Cowboy and Indian” icons with a Pop Art sensibility, Schenck set in motion an entire genre---Contemporary Western Art. In the decades that followed his work has been showcased in over 100 solo shows and included in the permanent collection of 41 museums worldwide. “I use the deserts and denizens of the Southwest as a point of departure. The landscapes and the figures that pass through these late-dusk settings become metaphors for an earlier time. Through these figures, I hope to evoke an ionic essence of what it was like to live and die in 19th century American Southwest.” A genuine cowboy himself, Schenck is a ranch-sorting world champion and the proprietor of the Double Standard Ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which has been his home for the past two decades.
Internationally acclaimed expressionist painter, printmaker, sculptor, author and teacher, Bert Seabourn is the recipient of several notable honors. In 1976 he was designated as Master Artist by the Five Civilized Tribes in Muskogee, Oklahoma. In 1981, he received the Oklahoma Governor’s Art Award. Oklahoma City University awarded him an Honorary Doctorate of Human Letters. His works are in private and public collections worldwide including: The Vatican Museum of Religious Art in Rome; The National Palace Museum in Taiwan; the Smithsonian Museum of National History, Washington, D.C.; The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, The President Gerald Ford Library; The Oklahoma City Museum of Art, and the private collection of George and Barbara Bush. An active octogenarian, Bert continues to experiment with color, style and technique. The innovations in his work continually surprises and delights the viewer.
“Best of the West” will also feature the pine needled gourd art of Judy Kelley. A native Oklahoman, Judy’s work is imbued with a passion for the cultures and colors of the Southwest. Each piece is as individual as the gourd themselves. Tightly woven coils of pine needles follow the edges of her cut gourds, sometime creating a wide rim on a wood-burned and boldly colored pot and at other times suggesting a delicate, multi-strand neckline on a subtle, more feminine piece painted with inks. Judy is a journalism graduate of the University of Oklahoma and was a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, public officials and non-profit, corporate and public institutions before retiring in 2011 to pursue her art.
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JRB Art at The Elms presents a diverse roster of emerging, established, and internationally exhibited artists who create in a wide range of media including: paintings, drawings, sculpture, ceramics, glass, fine crafts, functional objects, fiber art and photographs. This 8,000 square foot award-winning gallery in Oklahoma City’s Paseo Arts District changes its exhibits monthly in a gracious environment that fosters a dialogue between the arts and the larger community while providing quality art for first time buyers as well as individual, corporate and museum collections
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