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“Green Hill’s Facing South: Portraits
by North Carolina Artists Exhibition Celebrates
the Many Faces of North Carolina”
Greensboro, NC, February 13, 2008: Green Hill’s spring exhibition
Facing South: Portraits by North Carolina Artists will celebrate
the fine art of portraiture and present more than 20 portrait
artists from across the state. Portraits in the mediums of paint,
sculpture, photography, textiles, clay, collage, and more will
be on display. Visitors are invited to contribute to the exhibition
by adding a 2-dimensional portrait, 5” by 5”, unframed,
to a collective portrait wall. In conjunction with the bicentennial
celebration of the City of Greensboro, the centerpiece of the
exhibition will be devoted to Greensboro’s residents, past,
present, known, and unknown. The exhibition will be on
display from Saturday, March 22, to Sunday, June 1. The
opening reception will be held Friday, April 4, 5:30 to
7:30 pm and is free and open to the public; light refreshments
will be served.
The exhibition is sponsored by Lincoln Financial Group, Glen Raven,
Inc., Greensboro Bicentennial Commission, Blue Bell Foundation,
Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, International Textile Group, and
Marion Stedman Covington Foundation.
One of the exhibition’s featured artists Beverly McIver,
a Greensboro native and painter nationally acclaimed for her portraiture
work, has a long history with the Green Hill Center. McIver’s
work debuted in the gallery in 1996 and exhibited again in 1997,
’99, 2000, and 2001. McIver grew up in Greensboro and often
used her childhood experiences as the source of her work. For
example, her experience as a member of Grimsley High School’s
Clown Club as the inspiration for some of her most acclaimed work.
McIver is currently a professor of art at North Carolina Central
University. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards,
among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation
Fellowship, and the Louise Comfort Tiffany Award. Articles on
her work have been published in Art In America and Art News. Her
paintings are in corporate and museum collections around the country
including the permanent collection of the North Carolina Museum
of Art; she is represented by the Tyndall Gallery in Chapel Hill,
North Carolina.
The participating artists are James Barnhill,
Thor Bueno, Keith Buckner, Katie Claiborne, Sandy Cole & Kevin
Brown, Ann Conner, Pamela W. Crist, Drew Deane, Carolyn DeMeritt,
Artie Dixon, Shannon Duffy, Rebecca Fagg, Diane Feissel, Richard
Fennell, Tim Ford, Brownie Harris, Robert Igoe, Fritz Janschka,
Eric Lawing, Lewis St. Louis, Beverly McIver, Trena McNabb, Phil
Moody, Leo Morrissey, Vita Plume, Shaun Richards, Linda Foard
Roberts, Anne Kesler Shields, David M. Spear, Louis St. Lewis,
Tom Thoune, Caroline Vaughan, Betty Watson.
Another component of the exhibition will be a brief documentary
film of Greensboro by H. Lee Waters. The film, made in Greensboro
in 1939, documents the city’s mill workers and their lives.
The film is one of the hundreds of films of small town life that
Waters made all over the South between 1936 and 1942. Recently,
the films were discovered and sent to Color Lab at Duke University
for restoration, where many of the films were restored to pristine
condition. This 20 minute silent film will be screened regularly
during the exhibition.
As a response to the Waters film, Meredith Gillespie, Lee Narby,
and Michael Frierson will collaborate on a film installation tentatively
titled Viewing Glass that will capture the cinematic rhythm of
Greensboro’s past and present. In film, a “viewing
glass” is a filter through which a cinematographer views
a scene to identify contrast range. The filmmakers’ project
holds up such a glass to the community using archival shots from
the Waters film and footage from the present day. Gillespie and
Narby are students in the Broadcasting Cinema program at UNCG
where Frierson is an associate professor.
Viewing Glass will premiere
Wednesday, May 14, at 6:00 pm in the Green Hill
Center Gallery. The showing is free and open to the public.
The film will be screened regularly for the remainder of the exhibition.
In addition, part of the exhibition will be dedicated to portraits
provided by visitors through the creation of a Community
Portrait Wall. Space on the Community Portrait Wall will be available
for patrons to hang an unframed, 2 dimensional, 5” by 5”
portrait of their choice. Space is limited, so those
interested in submitting a portrait should contact the Green Hill
Center. These portraits will be on display for the duration of
the exhibition. Special thanks to Frame Warehouse for donating
materials to make the Community Portrait Wall possible.
Additional programming during the exhibition includes acclaimed
silhouette artist Kathie Housel Bogue who will be cutting
silhouettes free-hand during the exhibition opening Friday,
April 4. Reservations are required, and appointments are
available from 3:30 to 7:30 pm on April 4. Contact the
Green Hill Center for more information.
On Wednesday, April 23, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm
Green Hill is happy to host the premiere of An Evening
of Tall Tales from Greensboro with Logie Meachum and Bruce
Piephoff. Award winning storyteller Meachum and musician
Piephoff have collected a series of fanciful stories to commemorate
Greensboro’s Bicentennial. In addition to Meachum and Piephoff’s
performance, the winners of the Youth Bicentennial Poetry
Contest will be on hand to read their poems. They will
be joined by the Black Achievers Youth Group from the
YMCA who will also be reading their poems. This event
is produced in collaboration with Poetry Greensboro.
On Sunday, May 18, from 3 to 5 pm Beverly McIver
will discuss her work and childhood in Greensboro. The talk will
be followed by a reception, and light refreshments will be served.
On Wednesday, May 28, from 12:30 to 1:30 Greensboro sculpture
James Barnhill will lead a lunchtime discussion of his
work commemorating the Greensboro Four and his work on the General
Greene memorial commissioned by the Greensboro Bicentennial Committee.
Bring a lunch and enjoy the talk.
Also included as part of the exhibition are a series of art workshops
for teens funded by the Hillsdale Foundation. These workshops
are free and include a 2-hour hands-on art lesson and a curator-led
tour of the current exhibition.
The Hillsdale Teen workshops scheduled to coincide with Facing
South include the following:
Self-Portrait Painting in acrylic - Monday, April 7th,
3:00 - 5:30
Romare Bearden inspired collage portraits - Wednesday, April 16,
3:00 - 5:30
Portrait Drawing and Sketching - Wednesday, May 21, 3:00 - 5:30
The workshops are free, but registration is required.
The Green Hill Center for North Carolina Art is located
at 200 N. Davie Street in the Greensboro Cultural Center in downtown
Greensboro across from Center City Park. With a mission to represent
and promote North Carolina artists, the Green Hill Center has
been a Greensboro institution for more than 30 years. Green Hill
houses over 7000 square feet of gallery space, a sales shop, and
ArtQuest, a giant, hands-on art studio for children and families.
For more information, call (336) 333-7460
Museum hours are Tuesday to Saturday 10 to 5 pm, Wednesday 10
to 7 pm, and Sunday 2 to 5 pm. A donation of $5.00 is requested
for admission into the gallery. Metered street parking and public
parking lots with nominal fees are conveniently located adjacent
to Green Hill.
