Museum's Nature Art Gallery pays tribute to seashells
New show, Seashells: Inside and Out, features four award-winning regional artists
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – July 17, 2006
Arts, Entertainment, Travel Editors. Images available.
Contact: Emelia.Cowans@ncmail.net; 919.733.7450, ext. 305
(Raleigh)—Seashells, also known as the architecture of the sea, are the inspiration for a new show coming to the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences' Nature Art Gallery, located on the Mezzanine level of the Museum Store. The show, Seashells: Inside and Out, opens Friday, August 4 and runs through Sunday, October 1, with an opening night wine and cheese reception from 6 – 9 p.m. coinciding with the Museum's First Friday activities.
Four regional artists specializing in glass sculpture, photography, and water and oil based mediums will be featured—artist/illustrator, Marilynn Brandenburger from Decatur, Ga.; Don Dudenbostel, a professional photographer from Knoxville, Tenn.; glass sculptor, Thomas Spake from Chattanooga, Tenn. and Heidi Fowler of Reston, Va., who paints in acrylic and sand on panel.
Brandenburger, who created a series of shell paintings specifically for this show, has been a professional artist and instructor for more than 25 years. These paintings are a subset of her larger "Boundary Waters" series of landscapes and still-life paintings that refer to Lake Superior and the Gulf Coast of Florida, areas that hold special allure for her. She combines water and oil based media such as oil pastel over watercolor to achieve richer colors and more luminosity than either media can offer by itself.
Dudenbostel exposes the hidden inner beauty of seashells with his translucent x-ray photography, which exudes a unique ethereal quality. Don began his career as a child watching his father and grandfather who were both amateur photographers. As a student photo-journalist at the University of Tennessee, two of his photographs were published in Esquire and Newsweek. And in 1975, he had the good fortune to study with Ansel Adams at his home in Yosemite National Park. He has received numerous awards including three Kodak Gallery Awards.
Spake—who has been blowing glass for 12 years—describes himself as a sculptor of glass. He transforms molten glass into seashell forms, capturing the fragile beauty of the subjects that inspire his work. "I am inspired by the delicate, yet severe beauty of our natural world. Seashells are amazingly complex, structurally as well as domestically," Spake says. The city of Chattanooga commissioned Thomas for two sculpture installations as part on their river front development in 2002 and again in 2005.
Heidi Fowler magnifies single areas of shells until the scale becomes almost limitless. Her acrylic and sand paintings have an otherworldliness that she says references geological formations, deep sea basins, aerial topography, and even celestial phenomena. "Discarded from the sea, one fragment of shell among countless others could not be more unremarkable," Fowler says. "However, upon close inspection a shell appears to be a world unto itself."
Heidi Fowler, Don Dudenbostel and Marilynn Brandenburger will all attend the reception and are available for media interviews. For more information on Seashells: Inside and Out and to view images from the show, go to naturalsciences.org/store/nature_gallery.html.
Seashell enthusiasts are in for an added treat when the Museum hosts the annual Shell Show Exhibit, September 14 -17 in the Traveling Exhibits Hall on the 2nd Floor.
The North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, in downtown Raleigh, documents and interprets the natural history of the state of North Carolina through exhibits, research, collections, publications, and educational programming. Hours: Mon.-Sat., 9 am to 5 pm, and Sun., noon to 5 pm. Admission is free. Visit the Museum on the Web at naturalsciences.org. The Museum is an agency of the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources, William G. Ross Jr., Secretary.
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