Arts Now

This year's entries -- "really really good."

How can Dunedoo NSW, population 836, a tiny town straddling State Route 86 from Gulgong to Gilgandra, manage to stage an annual art exhibition which attracts entries from artists all over Australia?

Its Art UnLimited competition and exhibition, being hung this week, has attracted nearly 400 entries – 300 hanging artworks and photography and the rest ceramics – and this isn’t even a record year.

“We had a lot more last year,” says Penny Stevens, one of the Art UnLimited committee members who organise and run the annual event.

“But why do we get that many? It’s all because of the hard work and promotion that the committee put in through the year to attract entries and keep the standards high.”

Penny describes the creative quality of this year’s entries as “excellent, really really good,” and the prizes reflect the standard of most of the artists.

The Pro Hart Prize for Hanging Art is $3,000 this year, and the same amount goes to winners of the photography and ceramics sections.

There are also smaller prizes for best emerging artist, indigenous artists and others.

The exhibition is officially opened, and the winners announced, this coming Friday (May 18) in the event’s regular gallery at the Dunedoo Central School.

Orange News Now photographed some of the more vivid entries as they were arriving for hanging last weekend.

Entry forms will be ready in the next few days for one of Orange’s most ambitious art events, the Taste Orange Frost Fest art contest and exhibition in August.

The Frost Fest Art Exhibition is aimed at Orange regional painters, sculptors and art ceramists and offers prizes of $2,500 1st and $1,000 2nd for each of two categories, 2D hanging art (paintings, drawings, etc) and 3D sculptures and ceramic interpretations.

The theme is “Fire and Ice” but entrants are advised that they can enter works either interpreting that theme as a whole or just “fire” or “ice.” Entries are open to all artists in the Orange region and as far afield as Molong, Canowindra, Blayney and other centres of Cabonne and Blayney shires.

The entry fee is $30 for two submissions ($15 for members of the Orange Art Society). Entry forms will be available online from the Taste Orange website at www.tasteorange.com.au and from Orange News Now, and can be collected in person from Taste Orange at 28A Sale Street in Orange, the Orange Art Society’s gallery in the Orange Cultural Centre at the Sale Street entrance to the Woolworths car park and from Central West Photo News at Suite 3, 241 Lords Place.

The contest and exhibition are being staged in the Orange Function Centre from Saturday August 4, the event’s official opening, to the following Saturday August 11.

HOPES FOR ANNUAL SHOW

The exhibition is the inaugural event of what’s hoped will become an annual Frost Fest art festival in Orange, and follows on the success of the Taste Orange Slow Summer competition and exhibition last January.

It owes its establishment to Taste Orange’s executive officer, Rhonda Sear, who’s widened the Taste Orange festival reach to include art as a key creative and cultural product of the Orange region.

It’s hoped that festivals and exhibition like these will provide more opportunities for regional artists to display and sell their works in a city which, unlike most of its neighbouring centres, has no commercial art gallery.

The Frost Fest Exhibition is supported by various art groups in this area, including the Orange Art Society, Colour City Creatives, The Rogue Sculptors and Studio 15. Brad Hammond, Collection Manager at the Orange Regional Art Gallery has agreed to be a judge of the exhibition, and he’ll be joined by two other prominent local art figures as the event approaches.

MARTIN PLACE EXHIBITS — AND RUGBY ART EXHIBITION

Rhonda Sear is also planning to include examples of local art in a “Taste Orange@Sydney” promotional event in Martin Place on August 23 and 24.

“We’re adding art to our local food, wine and other produce as part of our campaign to increase awareness of Orange and its surrounding region,” she says.

“We want people to appreciate that we have a culture that includes a great many artists and a high level of creativity along with the products we’re most noted for.

“Sydney’s Martin Place attracts around 60,000 to 80,000 pedestrians daily.”

The Frost Fest Exhibition will also include a regional Arts Trail inviting visitors to galleries, artist’s studios and locations in Orange – Colour City Creatives at the Old Barracks, for example –and throughout the region.

And the festival will also feature a unique bonding of art and sport.

Players from Orange’s two premier rugby clubs, Orange Emus and Orange City, will be swopping the football for paintbrushes in aid of charity during the Frost Fest week.

Grade players from each club will take part in art classes run by local artists before presenting the “Fire and Ice” artworks for display and later auctioning at half-time at their respective home games  — the Emus at Endeavour Oval on Saturday August 4 and Orange City at Waratah Sportsground on Saturday August 11.

THE APPLE OF ONE’S EYE

Orange Art Society did the city’s arts scene proud with a special exhibition to mark the newly resurrected Orange Apple Festival on the Mother’s Day weekend.

Society members demonstrated their versatile creative skills by submitting a series of apple-themed paintings that drew high praise from visitors to their gallery in the Cultural Centre throughout the festival and following week.

Here are some pictorial highlights of the show:

GET OUT THE DAKS AND PAINTS FOR DAYBREAK’S ART DAKO

With prostate and testicular cancer being one of the most dreaded killers of men, it’s little wonder that health services are running major media and information campaigns to make men aware of it.

But in publicity terms, there’s been nothing quite like Art Dako campaign that Orange Rotary Daybreak is organising for September.

Art Dako is an art exhibition that Daybreak says “is designed to increase community awareness of issues around male-only cancers, specifically testicular and protest cancer.”

Daybreak is calling for artworks on this issue from just about every art and craft genre there is – “people who can paint, sculpt, weld, weave, write, knit, carve, crochet, pot, cook, sew, quilt, photograph, embroider, scrapbook, arrange flowers or create lace, felt, jewellery, icing or paper art.”

And the theme? Creative works need to relate to “men’s underwear or shorts, daks, codpieces, male anatomy or anything that relates to male-only cancers.”

ENTRIES “CAN BE HUMOROUS“

Needless to say, the organisers are keen to see a wide range of creative expressions and stress that exhibits can be humorous “and should convey a message to raise awareness and educate the community.”

"Art Dako" as interpreted at a TAFE student exhibition in Orange last year

It’s not the first time an art exhibition has been held to promote cancer awareness – there’s a Bra Art event that deals with women’s breast cancer, but not quite as anatomically intimate as Art Dako.

Sue Moffatt, Daybreak’s Art Dako Committee chair, says the exhibition will “have both creative and educational components involving community groups and individuals – particularly males – without geographical restriction.

“The creative component will consist of displays and the sale of visual arts items in multimedia; the educational component will be provided by relevant groups such as the Cancer Council, Orange Prostate Support Group and Lifeline.

“There’ll be no fee to exhibit, and prizes will not be awarded.

“The donation of items for sale on a commission basis is encourages, but items can be marked ‘not for sale’.”

Art Dako is set down for the evening of Friday September 14 and all day Saturday 15 at the Orange Function Centre in Eyles Street.

You can express your interest in submitting artworks by phoning Sue on 0414 961 390 or contacting her by email on susimoffatt@gmail.com.

O’BRIEN CENTRE’S ART GROUP – A THERAPY FOR MENTAL DISORDERS

For 13 years the O ’Brien Centre has been operating as a vital volunteer support group for patients and ex-patients deep within the sprawling grounds and facilities of Bloomfield psychiatric hospital in Orange.

With very little community attention and certainly no fanfare the centre has provided, “fun, friendship and a place to recover in a social inclusion,” to anything up to seventy people at a time whether they are institutionalised at Bloomfield or have gone back  into the community, but still need support.

“It’s a good mix,” says Jenny Coleman, whose own suffering with bi-polar disorder prompted her to launch the centre in 1999.

“We find that the people who come here, whether hospitalised or in their last stages of care or living outside, all help each other.

“And no-one says you’re sick and I’m better than you.”

Amenities at the centre include a vegetable garden where produce is grown for the kitchen, and the kitchen dining room which is shortly to be extended with a $40,000 grant.

CERAMICS AND PAINTING FACILITIES

Helen Wolsley with two examples of art at the O'Brien Centre

Then there’s an entertainment shed with table tennis, a bandstand and lighting for music practice and rock shows, and facilities for the creative pastime and therapy that’s becoming recognised as a vital aid to mental recovery – art.

There’s a ceramics workshop with two kilns which is getting ready to exhibit its crafts to the public, and an arts and crafts centre with computers and hanging artworks that have been produced by the centre’s painters over the years.

The arts group is run by Helen Worsley, who’s president of the O’Brien Centre committee and says she did a lot of painting herself as a girl 30 years ago, “but went into nursing instead because there were no paid jobs for artists.”

Helen says the painting workshops, “help people with severe depression or other mental disorders to concentrate, explore their feelings and express them through imagery.

“I’m here to help them explore their hidden talents.”

WORKS EXHIBITED AT MAJOR SHOWS

The centre’s artworks were exhibited recently in the Pine street art gallery in surrey Hills, Sydney.

Eleven paintings went on show, one painting was sold, and the rest were declared, “highly
recommended.”

Says Helen: “We’ve also had an exhibition at the Orange Regional Art Gallery that was well received.

The group also exhibited their artwork at this year’s Orange Show in May, along with cards, ceramics and other crafts.

The OBrien Centre is strictly a volunteer setup — for instance, its PR manager Tanya Navin, doubles in the kitchen as an assistant cook — and relies on grants and donations to fund its activities and operational costs.

It’s a place of shelter, comfort, companionship, counselling and activity-based therapy for mental health patients in need of support and friendship, taking up where the hospitalisation leaves off.

As Helen Worsley says: “We help people who often have nowhere to go and be nurtured by friends and family.

“We had one man in here who sat on a chair and said nothing for a whole year.

“He eventually opened up to us, but what would have happened to him if the O’BrienCentre hadn’t been available?”

KALUUM MAPLE – PRIZES GALORE AT ORANGE SHOW EXHIBITION

Orange region’s boy wonder of art, Kaluum Maple, has had more success with his paintings and drawings, carrying away virtually every prize in the schools section of the art contest at the Orange Show.

The 12-year-old Mullion Creek whizz kid, disabled and partially blind from meningitis which he caught in Orange Base Hospital when he was seven, drew special attention with paintings that he submitted to last January’s Taste Orange Slow Summer art contest and exhibition (see KALUUM MAPLE – THE BOY WHO TURNED TRAGEDY INTO TRIUMPH, February

In emails to Orange News Now over the past few days, Kaluum writes:

Kaluum's grandfather's Land Rover and dam -- 2nd prize

“I just thought I would write and let you know how I went with my artwork in the Orange show.

“I placed my pencil drawing of my friend’s dogs in the open age black and white and came first which I was very happy with.

“The ladies at the front desk told my dad that the other art pieces had to be placed in the children’s age groups because of my age, so we put them in the under 14′s instead of the under 12′s so it was more fair.

“I placed 1st and 2nd and I received a highly commended. I have attached some photos for you to see. I have decided that, as I only won $5 prize money and it cost $6 to enter, next year I may try my work in the Royal Easter show in Sydney and see how I go.

“Anyway, I better get back to my school work. I hope you like my pieces.”

In Kaluum’s second email he writes:

“I just wanted to let you know something that happened to me because I am very excited.

“I made my first $100 from my artwork. The sketch of the dogs “best buddies” that I entered in the show I actually painted for a lady in Mullion Creek.

Pencil sketch of friend's dogs -- 1st prize

“She saw one of my other sketches and asked me to draw her dogs as an 18th birthday present for her son.

“Anyway I took it to her on Sunday night and she gave me $100 for it. I was very happy to have made my own money from my artwork.”

And let’s hope you’ll make a lot more, Kaluum.

Self-portrait pencil sketch -- "me at age 5" -- highly commended

Teddies reading -- "painted when I was nine" -- 1st prize

Natalie Reid at work in her studio shed

As this story and interview was being published on Orange News Now, Natalie Reid was hard at work with her husband and sons shearing their big flock of merino sheep on their 3,000-acre property near Stuart Town.

But rough work comes easily to Natalie. When she’s not tending the farm with her family she’s cutting and welding steel plate to make sculptures as one of the founding members of the region’s outcast art groups, Rogue Sculptors.

“Outcast” may be a rather strong term to describe the Rogues as, but they’ve certainly suffered the proverbial cold shoulder on the part of the art world in this region, compared with its glowing and abiding support for “2D” art — paintings.

But Rogue Sculptors was formed to reverse the situation, to bring sculpture and sculptors, especially in Orange and the Central West, “in from the cold.”

The group of more than 20 artists, scattered through the Central West, is busily preparing for a major exhibition at the Orange Regional Art Gallery later this year.

Meantime, the Rogues are being invited to submit their works for the inaugural Orange Arts Festival – an art competition and exhibition being staged by Taste Orange during Frost Fest in August (Saturday August 4 to Saturday August 11).

This is an exhibition specifically designed for both paintings (including drawings, sketches and even woodcuts) and sculptures (including art ceramics), and both categories offer a first prize of $2,500 and $1,000 for second.

As Natalie Reid says in this ONN Video interview, filmed on her sheep farm, “it’s exciting to see local art groups getting together to stage an exhibition like the Frost Fest event, and to see it’s a possible annual festival.

“We’re hoping there’ll be more venues like this available for regional sculptors in the future.”

Colour City Creatives has held its first official art exhibition in Orange, marking its coming up to steam as a new creative force in the regional art scene.

The exhibition, staged in the group’s gallery/studios complex in the Old (Railway) Barracks on Peisley Street north, attracted a big crowd of art enthusiasts and supporters and launched the Creatives on the path to new creative horizons this year.

Artworks ranging from landscapes to contemporary abstracts by the centre’s 15 “resident” artists – those who’ve acquired studios in the spacious two-story redbrick building — filled the two galleries and main corridors, along with paintings submitted by associate members.

And guests were able to stroll through the various studios and view more works, and in some cases meet members and talk about their works-in-progress.

Colour City Creatives conducts individual and group exhibitions by invitation to art lovers and potential buyers, and is now preparing for its next open exhibition during the Frost Fest week of August 3 to 12.

Orange News Now filmed this ONN Video snapshot of the inaugural exhibition.

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Above and below -- the dramatic Escort Rock gold robbery, as depicted in a mural painted years ago by a visiting signwriter

You’ve heard of the old saying “painting the town” – and that’s what’s going to start happening in Eugowra in May in one of the most novel civic tourism promotions of the region.

The town won’t be painted red, though,  it’ll be painted with murals of old signs, images of colonial life and rural work of Eugowra’s past – and, especially, its most famous brush with bushrangers in 1862 that’s since been hailed the Escort Rock gold robbery.

Anyone who’s been to Eugowra will remember an old mural of the robbery which decorated a dilapidated old shop opposite the town’s big Central Hotel.

It depicts a stagecoach – a gold escort — travelling from the Forbes goldfields and passing the massive granite Escort Rock on the Orange side of Eugowra with bushranger Frank Gardiner and his gang bursting out of hiding on their horses and riding at it with guns drawn.

It was the biggest gold heist of the time, and contemporary singer and writer Jim Low graphically recorded his feelings of what the ambush must have been like in a visit he made to the rock – published on http://simplyaustralia.net.

“It was a tranquil setting, in sharp contrast to the terrifying commotion imposed by the bushrangers upon the gold escort: the harsh sound of gunfire as it reverberated intrusively across the countryside, the smashing of the escort coach windows, the panic of the horses as they reared in fright, the painful evacuation of the wounded police officers and coach driver, the crash of the coach as it hit a rock and overturned,” Jim Low wrote.

“This was followed by the excited, eager cries of the bushrangers as they plundered the coach for its spoils. All this accomplished in the late afternoon light, visibility further reduced by dust and gunsmoke to create a rather chaotic and fearful scene.”

This dramatic scene will now be the centrepiece of the murals project, which starts on the weekend of May 11-13 and will see more than 22 artists descend on the town to begin the task of pictorially reviving the town’s rich history.

The new gold robbery mural will be painted on the wall of the newsagency and supermarket.

And the old one?

EUGOWRA “GOING IT ALONE” ON LONG PROJECT

According to David Hyde, the Eugowra-based Cabonne councillor who heads the project, the old mural has been taken down from  the old shop-residence to allow a council demolition.

“It’s now in the Eugowra Museum in storage, and will continue to feature as the earliest depiction of the gold ambush,” he says.

“It was painted by a signwriter on a voluntary basis, and has been a feature of the town ever since.”

David Hyde says the Eugowra community has raised more than $5,000 in cash and materials to start the ambitious murals project, and the artists and signwriters who’ll do the work have been pulled together by Christine Signs of Parkes.

“We started planning the project nearly two years ago, and unfortunately missed out on getting it sponsored,” he says.

“The keen local enthusiasm has now allowed us to go it alone.”

David Hyde says the full project will take several years to complete, and will rank with the only other murals-based revival in the Central West – the old repainted advertising signs that feature in the gold rush town of Hill  End.

The aim is to give Eugowra a similar pictorial profile to Sheffield in Tasmania which has become famous as Australia’s top mural town and attracts more than 200,000 tourists a year.

“At least 10 potential mural sites have been identified,” he says, “while Eugowra schools are seeking approval to paint Aboriginal themes on removable steel panels to be attached to the amenities building in Apex Pioneer Park.”

Brad Hammond -- a passion for art and artists

It’s unusual, to say the least, to be intently studying a fascinating work of art by a nationally prominent artist and step aside for a patient in a wheelchair or hospital bed trundling by on the way to X-ray or surgery.

But that’s what’s happening at Orange Hospital these days in a celebrated partnership of art and health – the first time in Australia that a major art collection has been installed in a hospital.

And the benefits work both ways for the participants. The visitors have the opportunity to view and learn about the works of some of Australia’s best modernist artists, and the hospital patients have stimulating images around them which can aid their recovery — humanising the wards and corridors and giving them some gentle distraction from their sickness or injury.

And it reaches out to a lot of people. Says the exhibition’s curator and guide, Brad Hammond: “Something like 2,000 visitors come through the hospital each year, quite apart from the hundreds  of  patients and around 2,000 staff.

“The exhibition provides them all with the benefit of artworks that you’d normally only see in a top city or regional gallery.”
In fact, the paintings on display at Orange Hospital are on loan from the 400 artworks of the permanent collection at the Orange Regional Gallery, where Brad Hammond – also an artist — works as a curator.

“The project benefits the regional gallery as well,” he points out. “We’ve been able to pull important works of art out of storage and put them to work again.”

NO “WALLPAPER” — REAL ART

Brad says choosing the images to exhibit in a hospital requires some “editing,” or understanding of what sick and injured people would not like to have around them.

“But while we certainly take care not to hang anything that would disturb people, we also insist on no wallpaper – only creatively edifying works of art.”

Brad Hammond’s tours of the hospital exhibition are conducted weekly on Fridays at 1.00pm.

Booking are limited to 10 people at a time, and they’re not only introduced to the various artworks in the corridors and public areas but the styles and techniques of the artists and a great deal of interesting background and philosophy about art in general.

Brad lectures with striking passion on the colours and materials that the artists have used, how they constructed their images, what they set out to do and how they’ve actually achieved it.

He encourages group members to discuss the works themselves, and shows them how to “read” a painting, looking deeply into it to try to interpret the vision and meaning that the artist had in mind.

THE “BIG DRY” TO FREYA BLACKWOOD’S CARNIVAL OF ANIMALS

Brad Hammond introduces Freya Blackwood's children's mural

The paintings he devotes great detail and discussion to range from John R. Walker’s “The Dry Dam,” depicting the devastating drought of the last decade, to local artist Neil Cuthbert’s incredible pageantry of graphic characters in “The Inaugural Meeting of the Western District River Widening Association,” to children’s book illustrator Freya Blackwood’s wonderful carnival of animals and children in a full-length wall mural that she’s painted in the children’s surgical ward.

There are two other exhibitions of particular note, too – art weaving sculptors in the hospital’s cafeteria courtyard and, in the admissions section of the mental health unit, photo montages of peaceful rural scenes on transparent vinyl covering the windows.

Says Brad Hammond:”This is where people with mental disorders are brought to be admitted to Bloomfield. Many of them arrive in distressed, disoriented states, and the rural montages are there to make the encounter less of a shock, to provide a calming influence as they’re brought in.”

The Orange Health Service is promoting Brad Hammond art tours as “a series of weekly art conversation for staff, visitors and volunteers in 2012.”

The significance of this unique experience is summed up in an essay that Orange lawyer Kate Jarzabek — currently doing at arts course at TAFE – wrote after her visit.

“I learnt more about the history of public art acquisition in Orange, art appreciation, individual artists and the practice of painting and the purpose of art,” she says of the tour. “‘Art Conversatons’ is an experience that has my unreserved recommendation.”

To book a tour, call the hospital reception desk on 6369 3590.

EASTER SEASON ART SHOWS

Easter, Food Week art at the Orange Art Society gallery

There’s a lot going on in the local art world this Easter and through April, starting with an Easter Exhibition which was launched on April 3 by the Orange Art Society at its gallery in the Function Centre off Sale Street.

The exhibition will continue through Easter and Orange Food Week, which runs from April 13 to 22.

Meanwhile, the Colour City Creatives  art group has its own Food Week exhibition starting with an official opening On Saturday April 14 at 7pm at their studios in the Old Barracks between the railway lines on north Peisley Street.

The exhibition goes public on Sunday 15, with the centre’s studios open from 10am to 4pm daily to Sunday April 22.

In Molong, Jayes Gallery has twin exhibitions of artworks by Matthew Blegg and Connie Eales which opened on March 30 and run to April 29.

Matthew Blegg’s exhibition, “Through My Eyes,” portrays scenes of daily life that inspired him on a journey through Kampuchea (Cambodia), a nation still struggling to rise above the horrific “Killing Fields” of its all-too-recent past.

Connie Eales’s paintings, under the title “Face the Music,” are based on her love of music and the violin she once played, producing “thoughtful artworks with the soul of a musician flowing through her colours and forms.”

Colour City Creatives Food Week exhibition brochure

Orange artist, Robert Keen has a one-man show of his paintings fromSaturday April 7 to Sunday April 29 at Mortimer’s Schoolhouse Cellar, Old March School, 780 Burrendong Way. The display will be open from 10am to 5pm daily.

One of the Central West’s most prolific and admired painters, Ted Lewis, will be holding his annual one-man exhibition over the Easter Weekend at St Joseph Church’s Kenna Hall in Orange.

The exhibition and sale will be open from Saturday 7 to Monday 9 and will feature some 50 landscapes that Ted has completed over the past year, featuring scenes of Orange, Canobolas and Central Australia.
If the show goes anything like last year’s, Ted will be a very happy painter after  Easter – at his 2011 exhibition he sold 25 paintings and received commissions for 10 more.

Ted Lewis -- 50 landscapes on show over Easter

“FIRE AND ICE” FROST FEST ART FAIR TAKING SHAPE

As planning continues, more details are available about the Orange Arts Fair scheduled for Taste Orange’s Frost Fest celebration in August.

The fair will include a major art contest and exhibition based on this year’s Frost Fest theme of “Fire and Ice,” and will be open to all painters and sculptors within a 100-mile (160km) radius of Orange.

Artists in neighbouring Cabonne and Blayney shires are particularly urged to submit their works.

The event, to be staged in Orange’s huge Function Centre, will also include exhibitions and demonstrations by the region’s arts and crafts groups, many of which displayed their works at the very successful Orange Expo last year.

It’s also planned to conduct sketching or painting workshops for children during the week-long event.

Entry forms for the “Fire and Ice” contest will be ready by the start of May, and it’ll cost $30 to enter two paintings, with a special $15 discount for members of the Orange Art Society.

The fair will be officially opened on Saturday August 4 at 6.30pm, and the exhibition will be open daily to Saturday 11 from 10am to 4pm with two late-closing nights of 10am to 8pm on Tuesday and Friday.

Entry forms will be available from Taste Orange, the Orange Art Society, Central West Photo News and other locations. More details to come.

Local crafts groups interested in joining in the fair can register with Derek Maitland at derek@cwpn.com.au or call 6361 3575.

Melissa Barber -- ethereal abstracts with Celtic and early Christian influences

Melissa Barber’s intricate “bejewelled” abstract paintings have built her a wide national and international following from her studio and galleries in Canowindra.

In fact she’s one of Australia’s most artistically acclaimed and professionally successful painters,with her works exhibited in private and corporate collections in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, China, Malaysia, France, the UK and Ireland.

Her work began with what’s now seen as her “floating” poppies and roses of the late 1990s and has blossomed from there into ethereal abstracts influenced by Japanese and Chinese art and blending colour in intricate patterns with gold and silver.

With the the arrival of her two daughters in 2011, Melissa opened her new gallery at one end of the historic, newly renovated Finn’s Store in Canowindra.

Now, with her infants at a “more manageable age,” she’s about to begin filling it with a new series of works that combine her distinctive floating imagery with what she describes as a Celtic style of expression and subtle echoes of early Christian devotional art.

ONN presents this in-depth video interview with an artist who, as she says, began her career drawing the children and pets of just about everyone in the company she was first working for.

"The Wait" by MPP 2011 finalist Lauren Johns

As a contemporary abstract painter, I’ve always had a kind of default answer for anyone who asks me why I prefer abstract painting and not realism.

“I’ve got a camera,” I tell them, “that can capture realism far better than I can do it with a paintbrush.”

It’s a cop-out of course.

Whether I have a camera or not, so the reasoning would go, that’s no real excuse why I should shy away from applying my artistic talents on canvas to a good landscape, or something else in the traditional realistic genre.

But the point is, the camera does do it better than I do, and besides, my particular creative drive compels me to search deeply into the innermost hidden shapes, colours and character of a subject to portray it the way my emotions interpret it.

By the same token, though, it takes all the technical and artistic creativity I can muster to construct and capture what I’d consider to be a good art photo.

MPP 2011 winner -- "Lake Annecy Boatman" by Tom Riley

But there’s no denying that artistic painting and photography have stood apart over the years, even when we consider the great works of photographers like Cartier-Bresson, Helen Levitt, Frank Fournier, Philippe Halsman or Phillip Griffiths-Jones.

Photography has become an art in itself, and there are contests and exhibitions all over the world – and in traditional art galleries – that attest to the extent that any  prejudice against cameras as ”mechanical” devices has given way to recognition of them as creative tools.

And of course the 35mm and larger-image cameras have triggered, developed and sustained a vast, extravagant explosion over the years of high quality colour imaging and printing.

"Poppies on Purple -- digital art by Jan O'Neill

The two genres are coming together in this new era of digital photography, with the cameras and computer image processing applications like Photoshop and Gimp combining to produce highly creative, often abstract and cleverly manipulated digital art.

It’s a new art form that’s taking its time to catch on, but there are those who predict a substantial interest in this new art  in the years to come, particularly when the images can be printed to canvas, which a lot of the higher-end desktop printers can already do.

In my particular case, the camera is also providing the inspiration for a lot of my paintings – digital images from my camera that are digitally transformed into fundamental abstracts which then become the basis of the paintings that I put to canvas.

It’s a pity that many photographic competitions still insist that images must be entered completely as they were shot — digitally untampered with, absolutely unmodified  — but I’m sure this will change as the digital revolution in imagery gains power.

2012 MACQUARIE PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE

Whatever, it gives us at ONN Arts Now the opportunity to introduce photography as part of our regular arts coverage, and we begin with news of the 2012 Macquarie Photography Prize.

The global competition is run by Australian Art Sales, and the 2012 MPP is offering $10,000 in prize money, with $5,000 for the grand winner and four awards of $500 for sectional winners. There’s also a very attractive People’s Choice Award of $3,000 worth of camera equipment.

As for the four sections or categories, they’re listed as Funny Faces, Storms, Architecture and Arthouse ( “anything goes”).

It costs only $5 per photo to enter the MPP contest, and entries close on May 24. The judge will be Craig Parry who was winner of the “Live Action” section and People’s Choice in 2011.

After the awards, the 25 finalist images will be put on show at exhibitions in July in Sydney, Dubbo and Orange.

Further details, along with entry forms, can be obtained at www.australianartsales.com.au.

"Tall Poppy Syndrome" -- digitally inspired acrylics on canvas, by Derek Maitland

James Wynne's dramatic portrayal of the 1946 testing of the Hawkesbury Bridge

James Wynne is known throughout the Central West art world and beyond as a man of great inexhaustible passion – not just for his art, but also for the illustrious era of one of the great mechanical marvels of our time, the steam train.

The 67-year-old Millthorpe artist began painting in 1971 and focused on landscapes for some years because that’s what he wanted to be, “a landscape painter.” Then his childhood caught up with him and took over.

“I’d been building trains and loved then since I was a kid,” he recalls.”I lived in Ashfield in Sydney’s inner west, and as I grew up in the 1950s there were only two ways of escape – the pushbike or the train, and every train ride I took was a great adventure.”

He has now painted almost 100 stunning portraits of steam engines great and small; stunning not just for the creative and artistic techniques that he applies to them, but also for the religiously accurate mechanical detail that years of train worship have given him.

“You need to know exactly how trains are built and work, where and how each component fits into another,” he says, “I’ve seen paintings that look great unless you’re an expert yourself and you notice how the artist has misplaced a rod or something.”

“It’s like painting yachts, if you don’t know where every rope must go, don’t do it.”

James says the era of the great locomotives provides a colourful cross-section of NSW history that ended in about 1967 to ’68. He remembers one of the last romantic trains being the Skiers Express from Sydney to the snowfields when the line to Cooma was operating, “It was a great party train and had another name,” he recalls. “They called it The Shaggers Mail.”

One of his most striking paintings depicts two huge steam trains positioned and building up steam at one end of the newly built Hawkesbury Bridge in 1946. Each train had two others hooked up behind forming an unimaginable weight of six locomotives, and they were run across the bridge and back in tandem at 60mph over a period of time to test the bridge’s stamina and deflection from the massive bulk.

James Wynne -- painting and building great locomotives

However, it’s the ‘Shaggers Mail’ that has steamed its way to the forefront of James’s attention these days. He has a black and white night shot of the train from the photographer John Shields, one of 25  that he’s scheduled to paint over the next 18 months or so for a book published in collaboration with Shields.

When the book’s finished, the plan is to launch it at a special ceremony in Sydney’s historic Everleigh Workshops. In the meantime, just to keep his hand in, James is building an exact replic of a ’38 class 3801 locomotive,  the third of four trains he’s built himself.

James fashions wood patterns of the complex mass of components and sends them off to a foundry to be cast in steel. “I’ve got the wheels and boiler done so far,” he says. Of course, the model is in miniature, but it’s considerably bigger than the models that puff and whistle around the narrow rails in Orange’s Matthew’s Park.

James says he’ll continue painting and building trains until he’s got no puff left himself, “I’ll probably croak sitting on one of them, steaming around the track.”

Meantime, the prospect of a major art book, focused on the love of his life, has put new heart into an artist who, a few months ago, was telling me he was just about ready to give up.

He said the market for art had slumped so badly that “I don’t even both to show my paintings on my verandah  for visitors to Millthorpe any more.”

It’s true that art sales are not good these days, and every professional artist and gallery owner is concerned about it.

Even now James Wynne voices the worries of many dedicated painters.

He says the art market has been flooded with cheap works. “There’s no criteria for quality any more — people are buying crap.

“There’s been an explosion of interest now for 30-odd years; everyone wants to paint; the number of annual art shows is running into the hundreds.

“The art business has [also] been devalued and slaughtered by people selling paintings with false signatures,” he says, referring to alleged massive frauds like that of the Sydney art dealer Ronald Coles who’s been charged with larceny over an $8 million fraud involving hundreds of valuable artworks, many of them forged or sold to other investors without the original owner’s knowledge.

But for now, James has 25 new paintings to complete — every one of them dealing with his passion for steam.

"21" by Vincent Sell -- Best Emerging Art award in the Slow Summer exhibition

After the success of its Slow Summer art contest and exhibition in the Botanic Gardens, Taste Orange has teamed up with leading art groups and artists to put on a bigger, more ambitious Orange and regional Art Fair for the annual Frost Fest in August.

At this early stage, planning is already under way for the fair’s main elements — a large art exhibition and contest in one of Orange’s big community venues, including an art market with food and wine stalls and music, and an Art Trail which will lead visitors to local artist’s studios and an outdoors exhibition of sculptures on the edge of the city.

Taste Orange’s CEO, Rhonda Sear launching the planning at a meeting this week with key groups of the local art scene, including the Orange Art Society, Colour City Creatives, Studio 15, The Rogue Sculptors and acclaimed Orange artist, Loretta Blake and her daughter Larissa.

It was an opportunity for the artists to discuss and stress again the need for more recognition and prominence of their work in Orange – the need for events which will get their artworks in front of the local and regional buying public.

What was missing in Orange, the meeting was told by one delegate, was “a consistency of display of local art” to local people and visitors. Orange, he said, needs to follow up on the “wake up call” on local creativity and talent which was sounded at the Regional Art Gallery’s “100 Mile” exhibition last year.

Larissa Blake, who’s just recently returned to Orange to get married and re-settle, also made the point that “people travelling don’t want to see art in a hall – they want an art experience.”

Other delegates spoke of Grafton and Dubbo and their solid support of local artists and exhibitions, and described Orange as “dragging its feet” on local arts promotion.

So the plan for Frost Fest is to try to bring all these elements together in an exhibition, contest, art market and Art Trail under the umbrella of the Frost Fest Art Fair, with the painters exhibiting in town and The Rogue Sculptors and others presenting their work at an open exhibition at Loretta Blake’s Pinnacle Road property.

Rhonda Sear has set the theme for the Art Fair and the whole Frost Fest as “Fire and Ice.” As with the Slow Summer contest and exhibition, themed as “Water – Giving Life to Life,” artists will be required to submit paintings that creatively interpret or reflect the “Fire and Ice” theme.

Invitations and entry forms for artists will be going out in the coming weeks, in which time Taste Orange and the art committees will be organising a city location for the fair itself.

The contest and exhibition will be open to all artists in the Orange, Cabonne and Blayney areas, and galleries in those districts will be invited to join the Frost Fest branding with exhibitions of their own.

Artists who want to get in an early expression of interest can email their contact details to Orange Arts Now at derek@cwpn.com.au, attention  “Frost Fest Art Fair.”

WORKSHOPS GALORE AT THE ORANGE ART SOCIETY

One of the problems the Orange Art Society has to contend with is its location in the almost nondescript Cultural Centre at the rear of the car park at Woolworths.

It’s been noticed more than once that the car park clientele are almost entirely harried shoppers, and they’re generally so intent on the groceries they’re after that they miss the society’s gallery and its signs completely. The constant swirl of traffic and delivery trucks doesn’t make things any easier, either.

But the society not only has an ongoing, permanent exhibition of members’ art in its gallery – spiced with new images as their creators finish them – but offers a remarkable agenda of art classes for adults and children that covers not just all art mediums but every day of the week, including Saturdays.

That’s in addition to weekend workshops, which are usually presented by well-known regional artists, and other society exhibitions tied in with local Orange events.

Regular classes that are available include Life Drawing on Monday nights; All Mediums tuition on Tuesday mornings at 9.30 to 12.30; Oils on Tuesday evenings at 7.30 to 9.30; Watercolours Tuesday evenings 6.30 to 8.30.

Then there are Watercolour or Acrylic classes Wednesday mornings 9.30 to 12.30 and Wednesday afternoons 1.30 to 4.00; Junior’s Classes (12 to 18 years) Wednesday afternoons at 3.30 to 5.00; Oils again on Thursday mornings 9.30 to 1.30; Any Medium tuition on Fridays 9.30 to 3.30; Saturday Morning children’s classes; and on the last Saturday of each month another Any Medium class from 12 noon to 4.00.

The contact for the Saturday children’s classes is Lois Jones on  6361 8277.

As for workshops, a regular one is conducted every last Saturday of the month from 12.20pm by Sandra Wenban, tel: 6365 1130.

Among the upcoming classes is a two-day workshop on March 17 and 18 tutored by Barry and Lucy McCann. The fee is $150 for the weekend and includes morning and afternoon teas and a Sunday lunch.

The Art Society’s next dedicated exhibitions will be for the Garden Expo on the National Field Days site on March 24 and 25 and the Orange Show and Food Week festival in April.

RIVER BANK GALLERY’S SEVENTH YEAR – EXHIBITIONS AND CLASSES

David and Catherine at the River Bank Gallery

You’ve probably seen our Orange Arts Now feature on David Isbester’s very successful River Bank Gallery in Canowindra – if not, you can take a look at it on the Arts Now archive.

In this, its seventh year of operation, the gallery’s presenting another big schedule of exhibitions and classes.

First up, the popular People’s Choice exhibitions, starting with Smalls opening night on Saturday April 7. David says canvasses can now be purchased at the gallery, and artworks must be completed and submitted by Wednesday April 4.

In May, there’ll be a fundraiser exhibition opening for the “Don’t be a Witness, Get into Fitness” campaign on Saturday May 5, with entry forms and artworks due on Thursday May 3. The theme of the exhibition will be open with two sizes of canvas to choose from.

The 2012 Talls opening night is set down for the end of August, and the exact dates will be confirmed closer to the event.

The gallery’s next exhibition features local artist Carissa Ramsay and her works entitled “Waking Up the Innocent.” The show will open on Saturday March 3 at 7pm.

Upcoming classes include Felting on April 28 and 29; Oil Painting on April 21 and 22; and Life Drawing on May 19 and 20. For information and bookings contact Catherine O’Brien on 6344 2778.

LYN BUTCHART WATERCOLOUR WORKSHOP IN MANILDRA

Lyn Butchart's "Pelicans" -- "vibrant textural and ethereal nature"

The award winning watercolour artist Lyn Butchart will be conducting a workshop at the Manildra Amusu Theatre on March 17 and 18.

Lyn, who was born in Manildra of Aboriginal, Irish and Swedish descent, is a self-taught artist with more than 25 years of tutoring experience.

She’s developed a very unique individual style, inspired by the “vibrant textural and ethereal spirit of nature,” in contemporary and abstract images, and is renowned for intricate underwater themes. Her work involves extremely large images on paper incorporating strong vibrant colours.

Lyn’s work is held in private and corporate collections worldwide and has featured in many solo and group exhibitions. She lives and works in Grafton and conducts regional art workshops all over Australia.

Her two-day workshop in Manildra is from 9am to 5pm each day and costs $80 per day. For those who don’t have their own materials, paper can be provided at minimal cost at the workshop or at Raw Canvas at 105 Peisley Street, Orange. For bookings contact Lyn Butchart on 6643 2642 or Joan Stevenson on 0418 452 902.

AUTUMN ART SCHOOL FEATURES SIX TOP LOCAL ARTISTS

Joy Engelman and Aida Pottinger -- Colour City Creatives

Abstract artist Joy Engelman and five other noted Orange region artists will be conducting weekend workshops at the Autumn Art School sponsored by Raw Canvas on March 24 and 25.

The classes, running from 9.30pm to 4.30pm on Saturday and 9am to 4pm on Sunday, will be held in Kenna Hall on Hill Street, Orange next to St Joseph’s church.

Joining Joy Engelman will be John Wilson, traditional oils; Ross Kurtz, contemporary acrylics; Wanda Driscoll, mixed media bold and free; Robert Keen, drawing basics and pastels; and Judy Kurtz, beginning in oils.

Each course costs $125 a day or $230 for the weekend, with a $100 per day or $195 weekend concession. The fee includes morning and afternoon tea and light lunch. Students are advised to bring their own materials or buy on the day.

As you’ll see in our Arts Now feature at http://www.orangenewsnow.com.au/art-news-now-the-passion-and-genius-of-colour-city-creatives/ Joy Engelman is a founding member along with Aida Pottinger of the new Colour City Creatives arts co-op which is already thriving in Orange’s old railway barracks on Peisley Street.

“LOOSENING UP” YOUR PAINTING AND DRAWING SKILLS

Aida Pottinger will be running workshops on the intriguing subject “Loosen up your approach to painting and drawing” starting March 5 in the Colour City Creative (CCCInc) studios in the Old Barracks in Peisley Street (between the railway lines at the north Peisley rail bridge).

Aida says the cost has yet to be finalised, but “I’m thinking of a short course, say six weeks, for $120 — plus you will have to be a member of CCCInc, which will cost you $25 for the year.

“Getting your confidence back to start drawing or painting is sometimes the only thing stopping your creativity,” Aida says.

“In these workshops we’ll be approaching the mark making process in different ways with lots of different mediums. “You’ll need to start with a stable floor easel and drawing board, or some kind of stand to support your artwork, otherwise you’ll be on the floor.”

And she warns: “We will not be using pencils or small paintbrushes.”

Aida gives a list of paints, paper, containers and brushes – “toilet brushes, sticks, twigs, feathers, sponges, be inventive” – that participants will need to bring with them, and more details can be found on the Colour City Creatives blogsite at www.cccartspace.blogspot.com.

You can sign up for the course by emailing Aida on aida.pottinger@bigpond.com.

INSPIRED PAINTING AND SCULPTURE AT JAYES GALLERY

Painter Julie Williams and sculptor Hui Selwood have teamed their talents in a joint exhibition, “Beyond the Great Divide,” which runs from February 25 to March 25 at Jayes Gallery in Molong.

Says Jayes: “[This] opening show for 2012 is a strong and inspired collection, with references from Brancusi and Giacometti in strong sculptural totemic forms to interpretations of the landscape around Hill End” – where Julie Williams and Hui Selwood live and work.

“Julie works by applying heavily contrasted layers of paint with the fine lines of ghostly heritage buildings that evoke a deep response in the viewer.

“Against these, the works of Hui Selwood stand as totemic forms that imply the presence of souls among the ruins.”

The exhibition runs Wednesday to Sunday, 10 am to 4pm, over the four weeks. More details at www.jayes.com.au.

COMING UP NEXT WEEK ON ARTS NOW – The Rogue Sculptors: Bringing Sculpture In From the Cold In the Central West.

"Digestion Haiku" by Richard Byrnes -- believed still in this region

The Orange Regional Art Gallery has made a new appeal for information on the Richard Byrnes sculpture which was stolen from the adjacent Civic Theatre in 2009.

The artwork, “Digestion Haiku,” made in brass and only 35 cms high, is one of only two in Australia – the other version is on display in the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.

It was part of the city council’s collection of artworks, owned by the regional gallery, which were on display at various venues at the time it disappeared.

Gallery director, Alan Sisley, says it’s believed “Digestion Haiku” is still somewhere in the Central West and is appealing to anyone who may have sighted it to contact the gallery.

He says the sculpture can also be returned anonymously “with no questions asked!”

“Because of its rarity, Orange gallery staff had expected it to be returned,” Alan Sisley says, adding it couldn’t easily be sold on the open market “as the police and art authorities are aware of the theft.”

Richard Byrnes has been producing sculptures for more than 20 years, rising to become one of Sydney’s most prominent artists.

Despite the small stature of “Digestion Haiku” he’s been noted for his large-scale sculptures, including a six-metre high piece, “Harbour Cycles,” sculpted in aluminium and standing on the corner of Miller and Berry Streets in North Sydney.

His art has also been exhibited at the acclaimed Sculpture by the Sea festival at Bondi.

Byrnes describes “Digestion Haiku” as “a small poem to the chemical tract of digestion and makes stylised references to teeth, orifices, the digestive tract and eating implements.

“It incorporates a brass tap and plumbing corners, again to make reference to our own internal plumbing.

“The totemic forms are balanced to suggest vulnerability and the piece as a whole was made within the vague recollection of laboratory equipment.”

Anyone with any information regarding the stolen sculpture is urged to contact the Orange Regional Gallery on 02 6393 8136.

"Harbour Cycles" by Richard Byrnes -- North Sydney

At the age of seven, Kaluum Maple’s chances in life looked very grim indeed.

He was struck down by meningitis, which has temporarily robbed him of the sight of his left eye because of a chronic and dangerous build-up of fluid behind it and he’s been confined to a wheelchair since then because exertion of any kind quickly tires him.

Yet this year, at the age of 11, Kaluum has been voted Cabonne Shire’s Young Citizen of the Year.

This, on top of a cluster of awards for schoolwork that have placed him five years ahead of his level, and for artwork that recently had him confused with adult painters in Taste Orange’s Slow Summer art contest and exhibition in Orange.

His two entries in the Slow Summer art contest and exhibition surprised everyone.

For one thing no-one knew the works had come from an eleven-year-old, and secondly his interpretations of the exhibition theme – “Water – Giving Life to Life” – showed a bold creativity in construction and use of colour that stood out from many of the adult entries.

One shows  a series of raindrops with maple seeds and infant trees in them falling into the general melee of life, giving birth to the new, and the other is a similarly striking rendering of a huge eye shedding tears of water to likewise seed the earth with new life.

Despite his achievements, Kaluum is a very natural, unaffected young man who simply knows at a relatively tender age where he definitely wants to go.

And from his wheelchair, great ideas, ambitions and talents flow, along with a cherishable joy for life and vision that many children far older than him – and a lot of adults too — fail to attain.

We present this special ONN Video interview with the Mullion Creek boy who turned tragedy into triumph.

The late Margaret Olley by Ben Quilty

When Margaret Olley died at her home in July last year, one writer described her as “outspoken, bohemian and much-loved.”

She was also hailed as an artist dedicated to art for art’s sake, doggedly avoiding the changing fashions and tastes of the art world and painting her own immediate reality – producing from her studio-living room, packed with memorabilia, a constant flow of brilliant still-life works.

It seems almost natural that when it came time to be painted by another artist – the second great portrait of her life –the challenge should have gone to Sydney artist Ben Quilty, another uncompromising artistic talent.

Says one review of him: “Ben Quilty’s painting is not polite. Smeared, smudged, caked and slapped on to the picture plane with bolt virtuosity, his rich impasto works challenge assumptions.

“Using bold and unsettling subjects, Quilty explores the problematic relationship between the personal and the cultural.”

The result of this union of two creative souls is Quilty’s astonishing portrait of Margaret Olley, which won him the 2011 Archibald Prize.

And it’s on display –the original itself — with other key Archibald finalists at the Orange Regional Gallery until February 26.

David Astle by Amanda Marburg

The exhibition celebrates the close of the gallery’s 25th anniversary, and it treats Orange and regional art-lovers to some of the finest portraiture we’ve seen.

Orange Arts Now marks the occasion with this short ONN music video album of some of the most striking works on show – Matt Doust’s image of model Gemma Ward, the novelist and academic John Coetzee by Adam Chang, Nicholas Hardy’s “Hugo (Weaver) at Home,” Governor-General Quentin Bryce by Barbara Tyson, Amanda Marburg’s eccentric rendering of “Letters and Numbers” wordsmith David Astle, the celebrity chef Matt Moran by Vincent Fantauzzo, actor Richard Roxburgh astride his bike by Alexander McKenzie and finally Quilty’s haunting image of the late grand dame of still-life art herself.

Joel Tonks with winning entry -- "exuberance and classic seascape skill"

For a few glorious days last week, it looked as though Orange had finally achieved a major long-needed cultural and tourism event – its own arts festival.

It’s a proposal which has, for some time, triggered discussion and ideas among several sections of the local arts, entertainment and events community – to combine the creative talent of regional artists with the city’s food, wine and music in an annual tourist-drawing celebration of all the refinements that Orange is acclaimed for.

It took Taste Orange’s Slow Summer festival to shape and drive home the possibility of such an annual extravaganza, first with its highly successful week-long “Water” art contest and exhibition at the Botanic Gardens.

The “Water” exhibition attracted entries from almost 50 Orange regional artists, and more than 80 paintings were put on show in the Botanic Gardens’ Clover Hill function centre, many of them submitted by the Orange Art Society.

The exhibition’s official opening on Tuesday evening was packed with artists, art-lovers and community leaders, led by the Mayor, John Davis, and the director of the Regional Art Gallery Alan Sisley, and a steady stream of local enthusiasts and regional visitors flowed through the display for the rest of the week.

By all accounts, the show proclaimed the message that it was organised to put out – that there’s a large and dedicated community of artists in the Orange region with a high and sometimes brilliant level of talent, and it needs more recognition and the opportunity to exhibit and sell its works.

And of course, it provides a cultural attraction which, if expanded and developed, could establish Orange as the hub of arts and cultural refinement in the Central West.

CLUSTER OF ART SHOWS AND EVENTS

Wanda Driscoll's "Water-Lifestyle-Fun" -- second prize winner

But it wasn’t just the Taste Orange exhibition which put out this message last week. It was also the cluster of other art exhibitions and events that were going on at the same time.

The Art Society had its own Slow Summer exhibition in its small gallery in the Orange Cultural Centre off Sale Street, and also had another exhibition set up for the Fernery in Cook Park on Australia Day, though this one was unfortunately rained out.

Alongside the Taste Orange exhibition at the Botanic Gardens, the local Studio 15 Artists group led by Bev Duncan was setting up an exhibition called “Leaves From Our Notebooks” in the Botanic Room featuring works by Bev and six other members. It runs to February 3.

On the Friday evening, as the Taste Orange display was closing, the newly formed Colour City Creatives, led by Aida Pottinger and Joy Engelman, held its official opening and a one-night display of members’ works at its gallery and studios in the old red-brick railway barracks between the railway lines at Peisley Street south.

And on top of all that, the Orange Regional Gallery was opening its magnificent Archibald Prize exhibition — featuring the winners of the 2011 contest and spotlighting the acclaimed Ben Quilty portrait of the late Margaret Olley – which will run through to February 26.

So, Orange put on its inaugural annual Arts Festival last week, if not by name then certainly by the coincidental menu of different artistic fare that it offered Slow Summer visitors.

TIME TO BEGIN ORGANISING AN ARTS FESTIVAL

Vincent Sell's girl in pool -- a talent to watch close in future

It also became obvious, at least to organisers of the “Water” contest and exhibition, that if the full list of scheduled exhibitions had been known early last year, it would have taken very little effort and imagination to proclaim the week officially as the annual art fest that it almost turned out to be.

Whatever, the range of events and the talent on show certainly set the stage for possible coordination of an official Orange Arts Festival next Slow Summer.

What it showed is that, in the event of the usual lack of funding for such important cultural projects, various exhibitions and events can be staged all over town if need be and combined as a program under the Orange Arts Festival branding.

And not just that, but widened to include local sculptors and art ceramists who are further out in the cold of community recognition than the painters themselves.

Add the region’s food, wine and its musicians and bands, and an epic cultural representation of Orange and its region is complete – competing with Tamworth, for instance, for visitors not just from this region but from Sydney, Canberra and perhaps even Melbourne too.

JOEL TONKS SCOOPS $1,000 TASTE ORANGE TOP PRIZE

The highlight of the “Water” contest and exhibition’s opening night was, of course, the announcement of prize winners by judges Alan Sisley and Elizabeth Sarks from the Orange Arts Foundation.

The first prize of $1,000, awarded by Taste Orange, went quite unsurprisingly to local 19-year-old artist Joel Tonks, who’s studying multimedia at Wollongong University, for his rendering of a long line of teenagers performing hand-stands on a Newcastle beach against a vivid backdrop of a crimson sunset and its fantastic play of colours on the sea’s surface.

Joel acheived joint runner up in last year’s annual prestigious CountryScapes landscape competition at Bathurst.

Judge Alan Sisley paid tribute to his painting’s exuberance, combined with classical artistry, with shadowy outlines of tankers and coal-ships parked on the horizon “reminding us all of the fragility of our environment.”

Second prize of $500 went to Wanda Driscoll, former vice-president of the Orange Art Society, for her aerial depiction of “Water-Lifestyle-Fun” in the Foster area of NSW, and the society’s special Best Emerging Artist award of $250 introduced an exciting new talent to the local art scene – a young law student, Vincent Sell, whose delicate, moody, soft-edged rendering in oils of a girl moving waist deep in misty still waters marks him as an artist to follow closely in the future.

Perhaps at next year’s Orange Festival of Arts.

Meantime, ONN video presents this music-backed pictorial album of the main entries in the Taste Orange Slow Summer exhibition. Enjoy!

THE “WOMAN WITH NO LEGS”

Polish-German artist and hairdresser, Marta Galeziowski, of Boree deserves special mention for her striking pop art entry in the Slow Summer competition — a three-piece screen depicting, in tremendously colourful creative detail, what she informed her customers was going to be a “woman with no legs.”

They were naturally confused. “You mean a woman in a wheelchair? A road accident victim?”

“No,” said Marta. “You know, a woman with no legs. In the water.”

They finally twigged. “You mean a mermaid?”

“Yes,” Marta told them. “A woman with no legs in the water.”

Not surprisingly, her mermaid became a favourite of the many art-lovers who filed through the exhibition during the week. And the signature and date on it showed that she’d finished it just the day before the exhibition began.

Marta's mermaid -- the "woman with no legs."

When you think of art cooperatives or communes, the visions that often spring to mind are of very obsessed and stressed young things in matted hair and paint-spattered dungarees, living and working in derelict buildings and half-starved from lack of funds.

But when you see Orange’s Colour City Creatives, a partnership of two of the region’s best professional artists, Aida Pottinger and Joy Engelman, you can appreciate that cooperative artistry can be a lot more than simple dedication and self-denial – it’s a very fine balance of passion, creativity, critical support and making a living.

And it’s far from a leaking loft or abandoned factory that the two artists have acquired for their creative coop.

In a stroke of pure genius, Aida Pottinger has leased the old railway barracks – a solid, fine-looking red-brick mansion of a place that’s been sitting neglected and forgotten for years between the railway tracks at the sweeping railway crossing on southern Peisley Street.

With a crisp white interior decor, loads of windows, polished banisters and rooms all over the place, the two-story building now has a second life as Colour City Creatives’ studios.

Joy Engelman (left) and Aida Pottinger -- passion and genius

It’s here where Aida and Joy, along with other noted local artists, will work in close association, though in individual studios, free from the petty interferences of life, inspiring each other and taking opportunity of something that just doesn’t happen enough for local painters – marketing and selling their works.

Colour City Creatives are staging their celebratory first public exhibition in what is now the Barracks Gallery, with champagne and live music, on Friday January 27 at 6pm.

It’s only a one-night event, and there’s a reason for that – the “Creatives” want the place to be a quiet, inspirational refuge for its members and so, instead of regular crowd-pulling exhibitions, art enthusiasts and buyers will have to make private appointments to view the various works.

For any artist, it’s an exciting concept and, as Aida Pottinger and Joy Engelman made clear in this full video interview with ONN, it’ll make up in some ways for the chronic lack of a commercial art gallery in Orange.

With entries now closed and artists throughout the region beavering away at their easels, Orange’s Slow Summer “Water” art contest and exhibition, to be staged later this month, is already shaping up as an outstanding success.

And it could prove to be the first step towards a possible annual Orange Arts Festival, aimed at drawing art-lovers from all over the Central West and Sydney and Canberra.

Nearly 40 Orange and regional artists have submitted entries for the event, and under the rules of the contest that means well over 80 paintings will be exhibited.

The contest and exhibition, backed by Taste Orange with the support of Destination NSW, will be held on January 23 to 27 in the Function Centre at Orange Botanic Gardens. The event is taking place in conjunction with the Orange Art Society.

Taste Orange has put up a first prize of $1,000 and a $500 second prize, and the Art Society has weighed in with a $250 award for Best Emerging Artist.  The contest’s theme – “Water: Giving Life to Life” – has attracted a wide range of creative interpretations, with many abstract themes.

The official opening is now set down for 7pm on Tuesday January 24, when the judges, Orange Regional Art gallery director Alan Sisley and Arts Foundation secretary Elizabeth Sarks, will announce the winners. Twisted River Wines is graciously providing drinks for the evening as part of its drive to support regional arts.

The exhibition itself will be open to the public from 10am to 4pm on Wednesday to Friday January 25-27.

The contest has been organised to provide another much-needed opportunity for local artists to show and sell their works after the success of the landmark 100-Mile Exhibition at the Regional Art Gallery last September, when the sheer extent and creative skills of the regional art community astonished Orange art-lovers.

And with two other exhibitions going on in Orange at the same time – the Art Society’s Australia Day show at Cook Park and its own Archibold Prize exhibition in the society’s gallery at the Orange Cultural Centre – there’ll be a full feast of art available in the last week of this month.

It’s hoped the three exhibitions combined will help set the stage for a much bigger crowd-pulling annual Orange Arts Festival, including sculptures and other arts and promoting local and regional artists along with the two obvious accompaniments to art – the region’s food and wines.

In the summer of 1988 I was kindly invited by the Finnish multinational, Savcor Corp, to film the Russian Imperial Ballet performing Sergey Prokofiev’s ballet, “Romeo and Juliet,” in Mikkeli, Finland.

I’d never filmed a ballet before, and it was more than just a creative challenge — I had my camera on a short-legs tripod right amongst the audience and overlooking the orchestra pit, and had to “chase” the action back and forth across the stage a few times, knowing the music by heart but nothing of the ballet itself.

Here are three excerpts (1) Juliet and her mother realize she’s no longer an inncocent child, (2) the powerful, triumphal march of her family, the Capulets, and (3) Romeo and Juliet meet for the first time at a masquerade, with inevitable results.

These principal characters were beautifully danced by two of Russia’s top ballet stars, the husband-wife team of Anastasia and Denis Matvienko.

Enjoy!

The deadline for entries for the Taste Orange Slow Summer art contest in late January has been extended to December 31 to allow for the Christmas bustle.

Entries were listed to close on December 15, but the extension will allow local artists to enjoy the Festive Season without having yet another paperwork chore to perform.

The contest, held in conjunction with the Orange Arts Society, is scheduled for January 23 to 27 in the Function Room of the Orange Botanic Gardens. Its theme is “Water – Giving Life to Life,” with wide creative interpretation expected from the entrants.

Entries are open to all artists in the greater Orange region and are $30 for two art submissions and, for Art Society members, $15 for two paintings.

The prizes of $1,000 for first and $500 for second, sponsored by Taste Orange, have been added to with a $250 award by the Art Society for “Best Emerging Artist.” More prizes are expected to be announced before the contest is staged.

Wine for the event is being graciously donated by Twisted River wines.

NEW OFFICIAL OPENING DATE

NOTE: A couple of changes have had to be made to the original dates for the exhibition. Because of a booking clash, the paintings will not be hung in the Function Room until Monday January 23 – and entrants are asked to deliver their paintings on that date between 9am and 1pm.

The official opening will now be held at 7pm on Tuesday 24, with Alan Sisley, director of the Regional Art Gallery and Elizabeth Sarks of the Orange Arts Foundation co-judging the entries.

To make up for the exhibition day lost in hanging the works, the organisers have managed to book Friday January 27 as a final day. Entrants are asked to collect their paintings on that day between 12 noon and 4pm.

Entry forms are available at the Orange Art Society’s gallery and headquarters in the Orange Cultural Centre, Sale Street, Woolworths Car Park, or from Central West Photo News, suite 3, 241 Lords Place, or downloaded from the Taste Orange website at www.tasteorange.com.au, or by request to derek@cwpn.com.au.

For further details contact Derek Maitland, Earthlight Art, at 0406 316 612 or 6361 3575 or email derek@cwpn.com.au.

Central Western TAFE in Orange has held its year end art exhibition for diploma students in the Arts and Media Department.

Orange News Now went along to photograph some of the more striking artworks, and produced this short music video. Enjoy!

Entries are now open for the $1,500+ “Slow Summer” art contest and exhibition scheduled for the Function Room at the Orange Botanic Gardens on January 23 to 28.

Taste Orange is the prime prize-giver of the contest, which is being staged in conjunction with the Orange Art Society.

The theme is “Water – Giving Life to Life,” and the competition is open to all artists within a 100km radial distance of Orange.

Organisers are expecting a brisk response from regional artists, and are extending the deadline for entries to December 31 to allow as many as possible to prepare for the contest in the “silly season” Christmas rush.

The competition will be judged by Alan Sisley, Director of the Orange Regional Art Gallery, and Elizabeth Sarks of the Orange Arts Foundation, and will be officially opened on Tuesday January 24 at 7pm at the Botanic Gardens function centre.

The opening date has been switched from Monday 23 to Tuesday 24 to allow more time for the hanging and labelling of artworks and general decoration.

The first prize is $1,000 and the second $500 for the most creative interpretation of the water theme. Other prizes are expected to be announced as the exhibition date approaches.

The exhibition is being held to maintain and promote interest in local art following the highly successful “100-Mile” exhibition for Orange and regional artists at the Orange Regional Art Gallery earlier this year.

Entry forms can be downloaded from the Taste Orange website at www.tasteorange.com.au. They can also be collected from the Orange Art Society’s gallery in the Orange Cultural centre at the Sale Street entrance to the Woolworth car park, or from Central West Photo News at Suite 3, 241 Lords Place, Orange. They can also be emailed to you if you call Derek Maitland at 6361 3575 or email derek@cwpn.com.au.

Orange Art Society staged its annual Christmas Exhibition this weekend, presenting more than 60 works of art by society members and featuring paintings by landscape artist Ted Lewis and a striking abstract by Loretta Blake.

The society is now preparing for the $1,000 Taste Orange “Slow Summer” competition and exhibition in late January, based on the theme “Water – Giving Life to Life.” Judges are Alan Sisley, director of the Orange Regional Art Gallery and Elizabeth Sarks, secretary and former president of the Orange Arts Foundation.

The exhibition be held from January 24 to 28 inclusive at the Orange Botanic Gardens and is open to all artists within a 100km radial distance of Orange. For details and entry forms contact the society on 6362 5729 or Derek Maitland at derek@cwpn.com.au.

Orange News Now has produced this music video highlighting the creative talent on exhibition at the society’s Christmas show. Enjoy!

Orange Art Society president Neil Skinner and Margaret Moss prepare for the Xmas exhibition

The Orange Art Society’s annual Christmas exhibition kicks off on Friday (December 2) with one of its most exciting displays of local art talent on record.

More than 60 Orange region artists have submitted works, including Ted Lewis, Loretta Blake and Maryann Mein, who teaches horticultural art at the Orange Botanic Gardens.

There’s also a display of children’s art – paintings by local youngsters, that is.

The society’s president, Neil Skinner, describes this year’s response as “very pleasing – another prime example of the great artistic talent that’s flourishing in the Orange region.

“We’ve had to put up more display stands this year to cope with the response.”

The exhibition is at the society’s gallery in the Orange Cultural Centre, at the Sale Street entrance to the Woolworths car park. It’ll be officially opened on Friday at 6pm, and the works will be on public display on Saturday and Sunday, December 3-4, from 10am to 4pm.

The exhibition heralds a another big calendar of events for the society in the new year, with two important exhibitions – the $1,000 Slow Summer art contest with Taste Orange starting January 23 at the Botanic Gardens, and an Australia Day exhibition at Cook Park, with the paintings displayed  among the green fronds in the Fernhouse.

Two more exhibitions will be staged in conjunction with the Garden Expo in mid-March and Food Affair in April.

There’ll be more Art Society workshops next year too – with four new tutors conducting weekend sessions and Ted Lewis adding two one-day workshops to the 2012 calendar.

JOEL TONKS AWARDED JOINT COUNTRYSCAPES PRIZE

Joel's prizewinner -- "The Visitor"

Remember we ran a story on local art talent, Joel Tonks, being selected as a finalist in the $25,000 Essential Energy Countryspace art contest in Bathurst?

He did incredibly well. He’s been named joint winner of the Youth Encouragement Award for his entry “The Visitor” and shares the prize of $5,000 with Tom Buckland of Oberon – the first time in the history of the competition that it’s been presented to two artists.

The winner of the top prize is David Kas from Brunswick Heads with his “dynamic” landscape interpretation, “White Mountain.”

“SLOW SUMMER” ART CONTEST ENTRIES OPEN

Don’t forget that entries are now open for the $2,000 Taste Orange “Slow Summer” art contest and exhibition scheduled for January 23-27 in the Function Centre of the Orange Botanic Gardens.

The theme of the contest is “Water: Giving Life to Life,” and it’s open to any artist within a radial distance of 100kms of Orange city. The entry fee is $30 for two submissions, discounted to $15 for all Orange Art Society members.

Entry forms are available at the new taste Orange office at 28A Sale Street — 6360 1990, or Central West Photo News at Suite 3/241 Lord’s Place — 6361 3575, or the Orange Art Society in the Orange Cultural Centre.

COLOUR CITY CREATIVES ON SHOW IN MOLONG

Aida Pottinger -- Jayes Gallery exhibition

Jayes Art Gallery in Molong is showing the works of 10 of the artists from Colour City Creatives Inc, a collective of regional artists.

They include Aida Pottinger of Millthorpe, Tim and Lyn Winters of Stuart Town, Michael Carroll of Molong, along with Phil Salmon and Jola Nejman of Orange.

Colour City Creatives Inc is a recently established arts initiative where several artists have come together to create working artist studios in the Old Barracks in Orange.

Most artists work in isolation, but by working and showing together the group aims to increase their innovation and output.

Jayes  says it’s “keen to help support artist initiatives such as these and [we look] forward to continuing to promote emerging and established artists throughout 2012 and beyond.”  The exhibition runs to December 18.

ORANGE HOSPITAL WINS MAJOR MENTAL HEALTH AND ARTS AWARD

Orange Health Service’s Arts and Health Strategy has won an international award for mental health and the arts.

The award was made at the third International Arts and Health Conference held in Canberra on November 16-18.

Meg Simpson, who’s the chair of the Orange Health Service Art and Health Committee, said she’s “delighted with this recognition and is extremely proud on behalf of the hundreds of people who have been involved.

“Receiving the Mental Health and Arts Award acknowledges particularly the community participation projects – the terrazzo works in the new Lachlan Mental Health Facility, the adolescent Mental Health Unit, the Aboriginal Gathering Space and the 15 woven sculptures for the new hospital.”

ENTRIES OPEN FOR COWRA ART GALLERY AWARDS

The Cowra Regional Art Gallery is inviting 2012 entries for its nationally recognised $16,000 Calleen Art  Award.

The competition is open to any artist over 18 years of age living and working in Australia with an original artwork in any painting medium, including oils, acrylics or watercolours.

The gallery is also calling for entries for its annual Central West Regional Artists Award, with a top prize of $2,000 and says candidates can enter the same artwork in both the Calleen and regional contests.

Entry forms are available by calling the regional gallery on 6340 2190. Entry fees are $33 for one entry, $66 for two and $99 for three submissions.

Former Orange Mayor Tim Sullivan and his "horse painting"

The mayor of Orange, John Davis, once said of the city’s most renowned former mayor, Tim Sullivan: “He’s a genuinely good bloke and a bit of a larrikin, He brought a human side to what a mayor should be about.”

And Tim Sullivan’s “human side” was back at the mike to enjoy again today when he officiated at the Summer of Art Exhibition at Orange Highland Wines – a display of 43 paintings by local artists that’ll be on show at Orange Highland’s Gardens Gallery until January 15.

In an opening address that reminded everyone of his warmth and wit as the city’s mayor, Tim told how he grew up with not a single painting in sight. It just wasn’t the fashion or culture in the 1940s and 50s to be interested in art, let alone put paintings on the wall.

The only painting he actually remembers from those days was one he drew from a plastic bag to show the gathering – a fading, dusty, deteriorating rendering of a thoroughbred horse on canvas – executed by a friend in Tottenham, west of Dubbo.

But things changed, he said, when Orange began to become less traditionally Australian and more cosmopolitan, as Greek and other European migrants began moving into the area in the early 60s. “Now, today, there’s art everywhere. It’s become such a culture that hotels, motels and wineries have to exhibit original art with everything else to attract customers.”

Yet for all his unsophisticated upbringing, one of the successes that Tim Sullivan is perhaps best known for during his term as mayor from 1983 to 1991 is the establishment of the now-acclaimed Orange Regional Art Gallery.

“I didn’t organize it,” he told the exhibition guests. “But I was responsible for getting it built.

“I remember someone telling me – but Tim, you’re such a philistine about art. You don’t know what’s going on.

”Even in those days, people’s thoughts were on the need for a decent public toilet well before an art gallery.”

But he says he realized the value of art “when Gough Whitlam bought ‘Blue Poles’. Look what a great buy that turned out to be.”

And the first exhibition at the new Orange gallery, along with the thousands of art enthusiasts who’ve visited the facility since, have convinced him of the abiding need for culture in the community.

“The Orange region must now have thousands of artists,” he says.

Not quite that many, but far cry from the days when you rarely saw a real painting on anyone’s wall.

Artists on show at the exhibition are Judith Amsberg, Sean Hansen, Robert Keen, Corinne King, Jan Millgate, Judy Munro, Kathy O’Keefe and Don Pearce.

Here’s a short album of pictures from the Summer of Art Exhibition.

Hannah Sutherland -- prodigy's return

Indie-folk artist Hannah Sutherland will be returning to her music writing alma mater next week to highlight the end of season gathering of folk@canowindra

Hannah lived in Canowindra for three years, during which she “began writing songs in earnest,” says folk@canowindra’s brainchild, Nerida Cuddy, another noted singer-songwriter who’s been running the folk, poetry and acoustic music club at Taste Canowindra for the past two years.

Nerida, who also teaches music at the local primary school, describes the sessions, held on the first Sunday of every month, as “family friendly and open to anyone who likes or plays acoustic music.

“We get a lot of teenagers coming in who like to play their acoustic works for us.

“And we’re getting regionally popular, with people coming from Cowra, Orange, Forbes, Portland and Bathurst to enjoy our shows.”

Hannah Sutherland’s return to Canowindra – she now lives in Newcastle – coincides with the final work on her first studio EP, with the help and guidance of Mike McCarthy. She’s hoping to release the album early next year.

Says Nerida: “Her acoustic songs are a melodic meandering of introspection and the search for greater meaning and truth, with influences ranging from Sufjan Stevens to Bjork.” Some of the tracks from the EP can be enjoyed on her website, www.myspace.com/hanwenafen.

Nerida Cuddy -- "diverse and gutsy" themes

Nerida has three albums of her own, and you can view her profile and hear some of her songs at www.nerida.info.

“Her lyrics weave the fabric of human experience with the imagery of the earth, particularly the Australian bush,” a review says of her. “From the rich harvest of a country op-shop to protests against rampant materialism to the gut-wrenching starkness of grief, Nerida’s themes are diverse and gutsy.”

Folk@canowindra’s last hurrah for the year will be held at Taste Canowindra, Ferguson Street, at 4pm-6pm on Sunday November 27. Entry is free, with a optional donation for the feature act. For  enquiries ring Nerida on 0429 048 603.

TOP JUDGES FOR “SLOW SUMMER” ART CONTEST

Alan Sisley, director of the Orange Regional Art Gallery, and Elizabeth Sarks, secretary and former head of the Orange Arts Foundation, will be the judges of the “Slow Summer” contest and exhibition for Orange region artists at the Function Centre of the Botanic Gardens in late January.

Hosted by Taste Orange in conjunction with the Orange Art Society, the competition is based on the theme “Water: Giving Life to Life” and has a first prize of $1,000 and a second of $500. Other prizes are expected to be added as the exhibition date approaches.

The winners will be named at an official opening at 7pm at the Function Centre on Monday 23, and the exhibition will run from 10am to 5pm daily to January 26 inclusive.

Entry forms can be obtained by downloading them from our Orange News Now site – see “Orange Arts Now: $1,000 Local Art Contest for Slow Summer Festival” – or from Taste Orange at www.tasteorange.com.au, or by direct pickup at Central West Photo News, 3, 241, Lords Place. Orange.

ARTS OUTWEST FUNDING APPLICATIONS FOR 2012 NOW OPEN

Arts OutWest has called for proposals for its 2012 arts funding program which offers grants of $500 to $1,500 for local community groups.

The funds, allocated under its Country Arts Support program, provide for professional artist’s fees, travel and accommodation and have been granted in the past to events like drama workshops, community sculpture classes, tours of local theatre shows, artist-in-residence programs and exhibitions.

Arts OutWest says groups in the Central West wishing to apply “should read the guidelines carefully and must discuss their project with [us] before submitting an application.

The closing date for submissions is February 10 for projects planned for April 9, 2012 to April 7, 2013.

Information on the funding criteria can be downloaded from www.regionalartsnsw.com.au/grants/casp.htmil, and you can contact Arts OutWest itself on 6338 4657 or artsoutwest@csu.edu.au.

“TOWAC OR TUSCANY” EXHIBITION

Works by Orange artist Rhonda Campbell, themed “Towac or Tuscany,” will be on exhibition at the West Orange Motors Showroom from Saturday and Sunday, November 26 and 27.

The exhibition will be officially opened, with drinks, at 6.30pm on Saturday by Dr Graham Stevens, director of Radiation Oncology with the Orange Health Service.

Rhonda’s portfolio combines landscapes of the Orange region with those of one of Italy’s most famous wine producing area – and birthplace of the Italian Renaissance –  in “intense, vibrant colours, light, rich and varied textures and her love of using many different techniques.”

The exhibition will be supporting the cancer care and assistance program, Can Assist.

ART SOCIETY’S CHRISTMAS EXHIBITION

The Orange Art Society will have its best works on show at a Christmas Art Exhibition from Friday December 2 to Sunday December 4.

The show will be staged at the Orange Cultural Centre, on the Sale Street entrance to Woolworths car park, with its opening at 6pm on Friday and viewing from 10am to 4pm over the weekend.

TAFE STUDENTS SHOW THEIR BEST FOR 2011

Students at Western TAFE in Orange will be exhibiting the best of their 2011 artworks and sculptures at a Fine Art Student Exhibition starting on Wednesday November 30 and running to Thursday December 8.

The exhibition, staged in the B Block Gallery, will be officially opened at 6.30pm on November 30 by Alan Sisley, director of the Orange Regional Art Gallery.
Says Head Teacher Victor Gordon: “The works on exhibition reflect the extensive development of acquired skills and expression of concepts and will showcase students’ work through first and second year Diploma and Advanced diploma in Fine Arts.

“Art students at Orange TAFE are subjected to rigorous professional training in a variety of traditional and contemporary art disciplines.

“Students have greatly benefited from the continual encouragement and enthusiasm of the teachers, all of whom are highly qualified and renowned practicing artists.”

The exhibition will run weekdays Thursday December 1 to December 8 from 10am to 4pm. For more information contact Victor Gordon on 6391 5626.

Contest theme -- "Water: Giving Life to Life."

A second major art contest and exhibition to show and promote Orange region artists is being organised as part of Taste Orange’s “Slow Summer” festival in late January.

The contest is themed “Water – Giving Life to Life” – and features a first prize of $1,000 and second of $500, with other prizes expected to be announced closer to the exhibition date. Entries are open to all artists within a 100 km radius of Orange.

Alan Sisley, director of the Orange Regional Art Gallery,and Elizabeth Sarks, secretary of the Orange Arts Foundation, will be the judges.

The exhibition, held in conjunction with the Orange Art Society, will be staged in the Function Centre of the Orange Botanical Gardens from January 23 to 26 inclusive. It’ll be officially opened at 7pm on January 23, with drinks and snacks, with the judges’ decisions announced on winners and finalists.

The works will be on exhibition daily from 10am to 5pm until the close of business on January 26.

The entry fee is $30, allowing each entrant to submit two works. A special discounted fee of $15 is offered to members of the Orange Art Society.

This is the first of a proposed series of exhibitions of local artists’ works aimed at taking up from the highly successful “100 mile” open exhibition at the Regional Art Gallery earlier this year, which surprised everyone for the exceptional creative talent of Orange region artists.

Entry forms can be downloaded as PDFs from this page then printed (see download points below) or from the Taste Orange website at www.tasteorange.com.au, or collected from Central West Photo News at Suite 3, 241 Lords Place Orange. The deadline for entries is Thursday December 15.

For more information call Derek Maitland, Orange News Now,at 6361 3575 or 0406 316 612.

HERE’S THE DOWNLOAD SITE

FOR ENTRY FORMS

Simply Click, download and print

art contest entry form

art contest entry form2

CREATIVE, HIGH QUALITY ARTWORK FROM EARTHLIGHT ART.

Matte and art canvas original prints, ready for you to mount and frame.

And at prices that’ll surprise you.

DIGITAL IMAGING IS a relatively new but exciting genre in art – taking original photography and transforming it into abstract artworks that modify or enhance the fundamental structure, colours, mood and even intent of the original picture.

AT EARTHLIGHT ART they’ve taken the process one step further by printing the final image not just on high quality matte paper but on art canvas too — and to look at the results you’d think you were studying paintings in watercolours, oils or acrylics.

"Poppies on Blue" -- a Jan O'Neill Original

FORMATS AND PRICES

Orange Arts Now is offering the very best of these artworks as gifts for the Christmas season.

Each print, whether on Canon matte paper or canvas, comes in A3 size – 30x28cms – but we can provide larger sizes on request.

Each artwork is rolled and packed in a protective Post Office tube for delivery or for direct pickup at Orange Art Now.

And the prices?
A3  matte print — $33
A3 canvas print –$45
GST included

HOW TO BUY YOUR EARTHLIGHT ART

Orange area residents can buy direct from Orange Arts Now. Simply click on our ONN video screen below and enjoy our musical moving picture gallery, then come along to our office at Central West Photo News, Suite 3, 241 Lords Place, Orange 2800 and select the one you like from the preview album at the reception desk.

You can then place the order and pay by cash, cheque or credit card on the spot. Your purchase will be ready for collection within 48 hours.

Earthlight Art’s website at www.earthlightart.com also features a preview gallery and wide range of the images that can be purchased directly by credit card through PayPal.

You’ll also find Eartlight Art prints and other artwork on sale at the Galvanised Shed in Millthorpe — 17 Pym Street, Millthorpe, 2798.

Do something different this Christmas! Give creative quality art to the people you love – striking images that will give pleasure and inner reflection not just for this festive season but for years to come.

"Magpies" -- Jan O'Neill Original

GIVE EARTHLIGHT ART!