Rydell Visual Arts Fellows
This exhibition is on view December 19, 2009 - March 14, 2010
This exhibition showcases the works of William "Skip" Epperson, Felicia Rice, Terri Garland and Daniella Woolf, recipients of the 2008 and 2009 Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship Program at The Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County.
The Rydell Visual Arts Fund was created by Roy and Frances Rydell to promote Santa Cruz County artists and arts organizations. Their lifestyle and Roy's vision of art as "beauty in the home, in the garden, and in the community" suggest that art be inclusive of many forms, genres, and media and available to a broad audience. In 1985, Roy and Frances established the Foundation's first donor advised fund to foster the visual arts. From this work the Artist Fellowship Program and Organizational Grants for visual arts organizations were developed.
William (Skip) Epperson (2009)says "the sketches, the drafting, the painter's renderings, and the modelsthat I create as a designer, are a means to an end. They are utilized as an attempt to represent the ideas that are instilled in my heart and mind as the perfect environment for the 'world'of the play."
Skipholds a MFA form the Virginia Commonwealth University.He has been teaching theatrical design and backstage theatre for the past sixteen years at Cabrillo College and currently serves as the Theatre Arts Program Chair.
Felicia Rice (2009) collaborates "with visual artists, performing artists and writers to create book structures in which typography and the visual arts meet and merge."
She has published books, broadsides and prints under the Moving Parts Press imprint since 1977. Work from the press has been included in exhibitions and collections, from AIGA Annual Book Shows in New York and Frankfurt to the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Terri Garland (2008) has pulled her images "from their final resting places of mud-caked pews and condemned church floors, from both the Central City and Lower Ninth Ward areas of New Orleans."
Terri has photographed in the South since 1989 andhas continued to investigate and pursue with curiosity the social landscape of the region.
Among her awards are a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and an Arts Silicon Valley photography fellowship. Her current work focuses on the Mississippi Delta.
Daniella Woolf (2008) brings a "textile sensibility" to the ancient medium of encaustic*. "In merging these two disciplines along with my limited choice of materials, I create a newly formed language."
Her work has been exhibited at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Pittsburg Center for the Arts and internationally at the British Craft Centre, London.
Daniella teaches popular encaustic workshops and writes the blog, Encausticopolis, about all things wax.
* Encaustic painting is the oldest known painting technique dating back over 2000 years. Beeswax is mixed with damar resin to harden the wax and pigment is then suspended in the wax medium. Each layer of an encaustic painting is fused to the layer beneath it with a heat source.