events
4.18-20.2008
Artisphere - juried arts festival
Greenville, SC
3.15.2008
Pleased to Meet You
CAFfeine group art show
11.3-4.2007
Open Studios
Metropolitan Arts Council
9.15.2007
UVA Art in the Park - juried art festival
Greenville, SC
9.8-10.17.2007
Rock Paper Scissor
Pickens County Museum of Art and History
Pickens, SC
9.16.2006
UVA Art in the Park - juried art festival
Greenville, SC
4.20-21.2006
Artisphere - juried arts festival
Greenville, SC
9.15.2005
UVA Art in the Park - juried art festival
Greenville, SC
articles
Verhoeven puts it together one piece at a time
Paper is a cut above for this artist of collage
Feb. 6, 2008
By Aubrae Wagner
Contributing Writer
Greenville News
If there's a stray piece of paper around, it's not above Judy Verhoeven to claim it as hers and add it to her collection. That's because Verhoeven creates collage pieces with bits of paper. "I have been cutting paper and doing collage work since I was a kid. I used to collage gum wrappers that people would save for me," Verhoeven says. "I love the whole process, from collecting and cutting paper to ripping, staining and burning paper."
Verhoeven's professional background includes work as a graphic designer as well as a technical illustrator. Until this year, she has home-schooled her son. Now she has more time to devote to her craft. She says she became serious about her artwork in 2005 when she participated in Art in the Park. For that show, she created acrylic paintings, but says she actually wanted to put painted paper in the paintings. She realized then she needed to focus on collage.
Verhoeven's studio is located in her Cleveland Park-area home. She enjoys painting nature, like birds, flowers and animals. "Sometimes my work is personally motivated. Many times it has to do with peace," she says.
Although she enjoys the feeling of completing a piece, Verhoeven says it's the process that motivates her. "I like trying different things, such as different ways of cutting and staining. I experiment with cutting different shapes to fill different-sized spaces and doing subtractive work so that the negative space is what you see," she says.
Verhoeven keeps a filing cabinet full of papers ready to be put into her collage pieces. "I usually work on my pieces one at a time, but when I'm staining papers, I stain a whole lot of paper at once. "I use pages from discarded books, and just about any paper I can get my hands on, including the name cards from old library books," Verhoeven says. "I especially like books because sometimes the words on the page inspire the image. Sometimes I'll have poems in the background of my work."
Verhoeven also likes to use lettering and letter forms and numbers in her work, a result of her graphic design background. She recently finished a piece that she considers a portrait of sorts of her mother. The pages in the background come from a text about gardening, and the piece has flowers on it and her mom loves to garden. The piece also has paper pattern pieces in it, and her mom is an avid seamstress. "It's a portrait of who my mom is with the use of paper. It tells about her and the things she loves," Verhoeven says.
Verhoeven grew up in Greenville and attended the Fine Arts Center in high school as well as the Governor's School for the Arts. She also attended the Art Institute of Atlanta. Verhoeven is a member of both the Metropolitan Arts Council and Upstate Visual Arts.
Paper takes a bow
Sept. 19, 2007
by Tom Perkins
Bootleg Essential Culture
One might be hesitant to hop in the car and bee line for the Pickens County Art Museum after reading a short synopsis of their current "Rock, Paper, Scissor" exhibit. Reasonably enough, it's hard to get fired up over a "sundry mix of paper art" by 13 regional artists.
But don't be fooled. Travel deep into the heart of Pickens County – and don't keep driving straight on through to Greenville – and be rewarded with several surprising gems.
The concept was thought up by the museum's executive director, Alan Coleman. "It's an idea I've been thinking about for a couple years," he said. "I started looking at paper as a medium instead of the support for the medium."
Barbara Yon's "Kubuki Player" presents a texturally diverse, layered paper collage that at first glance appears as if she has produced a bizarre mixed-media piece. Resting on a background of what looks like wood slat, paper with a cotton consistency holds pieces and cuts of paper representative of 17th century Japanese art – Japanese characters and the face of a dancer, for example. Like the art it represents, the piece is elaborate, but differs in that it is far from stylized. Yon incorporates Eastern rice papers she accumulated from friends and visits to Far Eastern nations, juxtaposing them with clippings from magazines and other low-grade paper.
Another success in paper collages lies in Judy Z. Verhoeven's "Bird on Yellow Pebbles."
Like in Yon's piece, the textural element, particularly in the yellow pebbles, makes an immediate impression. The vividness of the yellow and blue and blue sky also hold the eye, but the piece would still be a little boring were it not for the bird. With its black, geometric feathers and rough figure, it seems more like something out of Poe's imagination than what you might find perched on some pebbles near the banks of Lake Hartwell. Whether intentionally or not, it balances the piece and provides an almost dreamlike and unsettling quality.
Perhaps the most unorthodox approach to the exhibit comes from Molly Morin's "Mapping (Internet Social Networks)," a large, site specific installation composed of four units. Designed on a computer program similar to CAD, large sheets of paper with light lines guide where she draws and folds, finishing with what she describes as "DIY Reliquaries."
And what would a paper art show be without origami? Japanese artist Tamao Chrysler, known for work in other mediums, contributes several colorful, intricate pieces to the show.
The "rock" part of "Rock, Paper, Scissor" is the work of sculptor and Bob Jones University professor Dave Appleman, whose style is simplistic and organic, and often includes smaller pedestal work. "Like many semi-abstract sculptors, he lets what's in the stone come out," Coleman said.
The exhibit runs through Nov.17. For more information call (864) 898-5963.
Best of Show 2006
Carolina Arts
Updated December 8, 2006
Upstate Visual Arts (UVA) in Greenville, SC, held its "15th Annual Membership Exhibition and Juried Show", at Gallery 202, located at 640 South Main Street in Greenville. The exhibition was held in conjunction with the annual "Art in the Park" festival.
The "Membership Exhibition and Juried Show" for this year was a wonderful mixture of original art. Over 130 artists submitted 227 entries to make this show a delightfully diverse and spectacular exhibit. Forty works were selected by jurors Sydney Cross, Larry Elder and Wendy Outland. These works represent a cross section of the great diversity of the UVA membership.
UVA is proud to announce and congratulate the following artists for the following awards for the "2006 Membership Exhibition and Juried Show". The winners are: Best of Show went to Judy Verhoeven; two awards of $750 went to Michael Slattery and Marie Gruber; three awards of $500 were given to Carol Tinsley, Dan Helgamo, and Lynn Greer; two awards of $400 were given to Matt Moreau and Hilary Jernigan; three awards of $250 went to Cecile Martin, Barbara St. Denis, and David Thatch; and three awards of $150 were given to Kathy Justice, MarinaBare, and Steve Garner.
"Art in the Park" was held on Sept. 16-17, 2006, at Falls Park on the Reedy & the West End Historic District in Greenville. The festival is produced by Upstate Visual Arts and presented by "The Greenville News". For more information, contact UVA at 864/232-4433, e-mail at (upstatearts@bellsouth.net) or at (www.upstatevisualart.org). Or visit the "Art in the Park" website at (www.artintheparkgreenville.com).