Feb. 7, 2003 – This month's "First Friday" opening at Bajo el Sol Gallery in Mongoose Junction is of an exhibition of works by painter Deborah St. Clair and ceramic artist Gail Van de Bogurt.
The two artists, both longtime St. John residents, will be on hand to discuss their work at the opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Friday. The show will remain in place through the end of February.
St. Clair loves to explore new subjects and different mediums, combining her skill of technique with her creative curiosity. Her current show reflects and celebrates this duality.
"It was time to trust the technical knowledge I have acquired up to this point in my life," she says. "After several years of studying technique, visual laws, and participating in artists' workshops, I had the desire to use that acquired knowledge at a less-conscious level. I put it on the back burner to use a more subliminal level.
Her nonetheless conscious desire, then, was "to be free to start with an idea and paint it using creative instinct" beyond visual reality. "The technical knowledge is there to call upon," she says, "but the painting is to have reign and the last word."
The works that Van de Bogurt is showing represent a departure from her more functional earthenware. Working out of the studio at her Fish Bay home, she creates functional art pottery, ceramic boxes, and free-standing and hanging clay sculpture.
Both her sculpture and her functional work explore the interface between humans and nature. The human body, and especially the female body, has become part of her iconography to pose questions about the human journey: "How do we affect each other, and what is our relationship to the natural world? We are both creators and destroyers; what is our intent?" Sometimes she will incorporate the written word, bringing another layer of meaning into dialogue with the viewer of her images.
As artist-in-residence at Maho Bay Camps this year, Van de Bogurt has begun a new project: creating a clay studio geared toward both teaching and recycling resources into art. "After years of electric firing, the new scrap wood-burning kiln there promises to give my work the rich, visual touch of the fire," she says.
Bajo El Sol business hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday. For more information, call 693-7070 or e-mail to Bajo el Sol.
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