Community Gallery

The Mobile Arts Council is hosting three exhibitions throughout March! Impressions by Carol George, Life Under the Sea by Susan Gibbs, and Love In Bloom by Sandy Holberg will hand in the Mobile Arts Council Gallery until March 31st, 2021. 

Impressions by Carol George is a collection of impressionistic acrylic paintings that focus primarily on landscapes. As a self-taught artist, she expresses herself in a painterly style. Bold colors and brush strokes can be found throughout her works.  

Susan Gibbs’ Life Under the Sea is a collection that has been 35 years in the making. One night after work, Susan found herself admiring the aquariums in B&B Pet Stop. It was here that she discovered an affinity for the colorful organisms that make up Life Under the Sea. With assistance from the internet, Susan has been able to travel under every body of water, from depths of thirty feet to seven miles. Using clay, she has translated her findings into expressions of what she has found. Susan says, “I do not try to recreate what I see, but rather how I feel about what I see.”  

Love in Bloom displays Sandy Holberg’s love for flowers and the natural world, filled as it is with sunlight, color and living things. These things bring her joy and happiness, and Sandy tries to express them with a few lines and liquid color. Sandy Holberg spent her early years with the flowers that surrounded her Northeast Mississippi home. Her Dad was a well-known horticulturist, and she captured much of his hybridized creations through her studies at the University of Alabama.  After brightening many a South Alabama home with her decorator’s talent, she resumed her garden passion with new images of the blossoms she loved which began her career.  

These exhibitions will be on display until March 31st, 2021 with extended gallery hours on March 12th from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and March 27th from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. The Mobile Arts Council’s Gallery @ Room 1927 is open Wednesday – Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and is located at 6 S Joachim St. Mobile, AL 36602. Come by and see these three amazing exhibitions! Contact Sydney Cramer at scramer@mobilearts.org or 251-432-9796 for more information. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesday – Friday. 

                                             

The Mobile Arts Council recognizes that Black artists have been historically underrepresented in the Visual Arts field. During Black History Month this February, we extended an invitation for any Mobile-based Black artists 18+ (no MAC membership required) to be featured in MAC’s Gallery @ Room 1927 and/or in our Virtual Gallery online. Featured painting by Soynika Edwards-Bush.

This month we will be featuring two exhibitions: Art For All and Nancy Goodman’s Quilts. These pieces will hang through the end of January in the Mobile Arts Council’s Gallery @ Room 1927. The gallery is open to the public Wednesday – Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The Mobile Arts Council, The Central Arts Collective, Full Life Ahead Foundation, and L’Arche Mobile are pleased to announce Art for All, an inclusive arts education program for adults. The goal of the program is to bring people of all abilities together to express their creativity and develop their skills in a variety of arts media including acrylics, graphics, watercolors, and more. This January, 58 framed works from Art for All, all created by students with developmental disabilities over a number of years, will be featured in our gallery. 100% of proceeds from these art sales will go toward purchasing supplies for Art For All‘s classes, so stop by and purchase a special piece for your home while supporting a great cause! If you are interested in volunteering or making a financial donation towards this program, please contact Lucy Gafford at director@mobilearts.org.

Nancy Goodman makes art quilts – quilts meant for the wall, rather than the bed. While firmly grounded in the craft of quilting, Goodman’s quilt style is improvisational, made without patterns or templates. She creates her designs using vibrant colors and complicated piecing. A final layer of intricate quilting (stitching that holds all the layers together) fills every inch of the quilt. Goodman exhibits her quilts in national and international shows and has won many awards. She lives and works in Mobile, AL. Within the artist’s featured works, she has included a Peace and Freedom Series. According to Goodman, “All over the world people are struggling for peace and freedom. These quilts commemorate some of those struggles.”

The Gallery in Room 1927 is open to the public Wednesday – Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Our November exhibitions include the works from the Mobile Art Association and the Watercolor & Graphic Arts Society. The exhibitions will hang from November 6th to December 17th. We will remain closed November 25th – 27th for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Mobile Art Association is the ideal organization for amateur and professional artists. With over 100 members, MAA provides numerous opportunities to network with and learn from fellow artists.

As a non-profit organization, the object of the Watercolor & Graphic Arts Society is to create, through education, more interest in the media of watercolor and graphic arts, and to promote finer watercolor and graphic arts exhibitions by Alabama artists. The Society holds a minimum of two exhibitions annually, at least one of which is always juried. 

See the Mobile Art Association Fall Open Show and 2020 winners in our Virtual Gallery here! The Watercolor and Graphic Arts Society photos will be added later this month. See all the works in this video tour below.

The Mobile Art Association show includes: Yuko Takushige Jordan, Marnée Wiley, Clara Brunk, Fan Murray, Gina McGee, Melissa Munger, Helen Thurber, Dare’ Radcliff, Mary Rodning, Stephanie Bromley, Anne Rose, Karen D. McGahagin, Gail Bramer ,Corky Goldman, Judy Campbell, Tamara Jordan Lindsay, Nikki Shaw, Nola Powell, Jerry Fair, Melissa M. Root, Joanne Brandt, Juli Day, Philippe Oszuscik, Carol Wiggins, Judy Aronson, Michelle Jones, Mike Carmichael, Rudolph C. Villarreal, Suzanne Fox, Lynn Amedy, Nancy Hora, Benjamin Kaiser, Barbara Rettig, and Jeremy Sigle.

The Watercolor & Graphic Arts Society participants include: Ben Kaiser, Vanessa Quintana, Carolyn Greene, Lynda Smith Touart, Corky Goldman, Karen D. McGahagin, Barbara Rettig, Carol Wiggins, Marcy Matherne, Anne Festorazzi, Martha Ann Rowan, Deborah Guy, Philippe Oszuscik, Judy Aronson, Gail Bramer, Kate Seawell, Mayssam Iskandar, Barbara Cline, Mary Anne Trovato, Mary Rodning , Juli Day, Barbara Davis, Melissa Root, Rudolph C. Villarreal, Laura Becker, JoAnn Cox, and Amanda Youngblood.

The Gallery in Room 1927 is open to the public Wednesday – Friday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The July exhibitions, “Quarantine Walks,” “Nature’s Lens,” and “Quilts from Quarantine” will hang from July 3rd to August 27th. View the complete exhibitions in our Virtual Gallery online here!

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Micah Mermilliod presents Fujifilm Instax photographs in the exhibition titled, “Quarantine Walks.” Mermilliod has been working on documenting his daily walks during the quarantine. These pieces were created to reflect changes that he noticed in the community throughout the quarantine.

“Nature’s Lens,'” is the collection of oil paintings of Reagan Barnett. She strives to capture detail, while still maintaining an element of fantasy in her works. Barnett has been oil painting since she was 9 years old, but it is a part-time venture for her. She earned her Ph.D. in biomedical science from the University of South Alabama and now teaches in the Department of Natural Sciences at the University of Mobile.

Taylor Shaw exhibits “Quilts from Quarantine,” featuring a series of wooden “quilts” that the artist created collaboratively. Shaw says, “This project became a way to connect with friends, family, and complete strangers through the act of creativity. The United States Postal Service became the backbone by which these quilts were transported from my hands to others and back again.

Each piece speaks to the individual and what was deemed important for that person to convey during the Covid-19 pandemic. It was my hope that this project would provide a creative respite from the constant bombardment of bad news coming out and we could rely on each other, even if it was for one simple act of creating.

Quilts from Quarantine became “productivity” with no ties to money. A group effort to create something larger than the individual. I hope this project provides a sense of a distant community and gives a small break from worries. Take care of each other.”

The Mobile Arts Council will feature artists Ben Kaiser and Cat Pope in their new show, “Home and Heritage,” and Sahar Alford’s exhibition, “Universal Beauty,” during the month of March in MAC’s Gallery at the Saenger’s Room 1927.

According to Kaiser and Pope, artists often look back on their childhoods for inspiration. They think of loved ones. They think of the places where they grew up; places that mean or meant something. They think about where they came from and the people that matter most.

“Home and Heritage,” is a show of growth. It is a depiction of pasts and beginnings; of hometowns and explorations; and of colors that take us back to a place we remember. Kaiser and Pope hope that in seeing their work you not only see a part of them, but connect to a piece that resonates with you, too.

Like painting, Alford’s love and passion for dance came at a very early age. Her March exhibition is a series of realistic paintings with the theme of “Universal Beauty.” The purpose is to capture beauty, strength and dreams of females from around the world through different dance styles and cultures.

Gallery hours at Room 1927 are from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesdays through Fridays. The exhibitions will hang from March 6th through the 30th, with a special reception from 6 to 9 p.m. on Friday, March 13th, LoDa ArtWalk night.

Artists Jerry Roldan, Hunter Cobb, and others will be exhibiting January 6th to the 31st in MAC’s Gallery at the Saenger’s Room 1927.

Jerry Roldan’s exhibition, “Doodles from a Clutter Reality,” consists of arbitrary shapes and layers of various art styles. His spatial designs and vibrant use of colors draw in the viewer to interpret the narrative aspects of his paintings.

Roldan explores time as an element in his painting by the dividing the picture into sections, using the edges of the canvas, and by creating numerous accent areas. This encourages the viewer to spend time looking at the work from different distances, angles, and levels of detail. If they look for 3 minutes or 10 minutes, the work thereby exists as a 3 minute or 10 minute “film”.

Roldan encourages the viewer to spend “creative time” thinking of the meaning of the work. As many of the arbitrary shapes occur by chance, it leaves aspects of the work open for loose interpretation.

 “Vanishing Point,” organized by Hunter Cobb, is a group show featuring artists from Innova Arts, Dauphin Island Heritage and Arts Council, and other area artists. The underlying theme of this group exhibition is utilizing vanishing point perspective.

Gallery hours at Room 1927 will be 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. on Tuesdays – Fridays. The exhibitions will hang from January 6th through the 31st, with a special reception from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on January 10th, LoDa ArtWalk night.