Exhibitions
JAN BURLESON: ROCHAMBEAU DRAWINGS 2012-2013
The Arts Center / 320 N. White St., Athens, TN January 7, 2019 - February 8, 2019
Jan Burleson
Work by Athens artist, Jan Burleson, will be on exhibit in the Willson Exhibit Room at The Arts Center this January. Rochambeau Drawings 2012-2013 will be on display January 7 – February 8, 2019. The Opening Reception for the exhibit is at 5:30 PM on Friday January 11, 2019 and is free and open to the public.
Jan Burleson has a BFA in Painting and Drawing from University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Burleson is known locally for her photography, early watercolors, and her recent ink drawings inspired by Athens Wetlands. Her work has been exhibited across the Southeast, including juried exhibits such as the Dogwood Arts Regional Fine Arts Exhibition (Knoxville) and Positive-Negative 32, Slocumb Gallery (East Tennessee State University). Burleson has won awards for her work in photography, drawing, and painting, locally from Community Artist League and Athens Area Council for the Arts and regionally such as her selection for the juried FRESH Young and Emerging Artists Exhibit, Association of Visual Artists (Chattanooga) and a Curator’s Award as well as the Lillian B. Feinstein Scholarship Award (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, 2013).
In 2006 the artist joined Ellen Kimball (then AACA director) for an arts conference in Baltimore, Maryland. During a walk she happened upon the historic Rochambeau Hotel and found the once elegant hotel to be a tattered structure near demolition. Burleson took a series of photographs focusing on the openings left by the absence of former architectural components. The photos are the basis for the drawings exhibited, which were some of her earliest works inspired by the destruction of the hotel.
In the artist’s words, “Madeleine L’Engle wrote, ‘Artistic temperament sometimes seems a battleground, a dark angel of destruction and a bright angel of creativity wrestling.’ The drawings are a tribute, transforming loss. They are derivatives of derivatives, broken down images from broken down images that excavate artistic power from the rubble of destruction. They seek to bear an internal surface dialogue of interacting forms in search of a language that narrates a unity of line and color, and stasis and collapse. They seek to urge remembrance, bringing the power of tragedy and loss into a unified, transcendent present.”
For questions or more information about this or any AACA program contact The Arts Center by phone at 423-745-8781, visit our website at athensartscouncil.org, or in person at 320 North White Street in Athens.
