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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Mountain artist comes to sea in Acme exhibition

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By Meghan Barnes

Contributing Writer

Dick Roberts, co-founder of Acme Art Studio, is introducing Wilmington to a diverse collection of work in his curated “Eight North Carolina Artists from the Mountain to Sea” exhibit, featuring the work of western North Carolina husband and wife artists Mark Carter and Theresa “Tree” Reuter. Theirs, along with work of six of the state’s other fine artists, will hang May 22 through June 19.

What’s unique about this exhibition is Roberts’ belief in allowing artists to pick what pieces to exhibit, introducing a combination of interests, styles and techniques normally not included in a single show.

Reuter explained the importance of incorporating different elemental pieces into an artists’ show.

“My style does not stay the same. I like to start paintings differently and push myself to learn new things. None of my work is necessarily style specific,” she said.

One element of Reuter’s work, however, stays the same from piece to piece.

“I love movement; I love to express the life that is in things,” she said. “How you can show every change, the activities of your subject, and every bit of history in that person, that tree, that animal, that moment.”

After years of living in the North, Reuter and Carter decided to move to North Carolina, where they both found new and continuously inspiring wildlife and people, and a welcoming art community.

It was during this time Reuter met Mary Rose, the owner of a quaint cabin surrounded by a large, vibrant garden. This mountain garden has been nurtured for many years by a group of women, also artists. Some have been lifelong friends from childhood. All of them have shared a sisterhood with Nan Morrow, who started the garden in 1947.

“I was fortunate enough to get to know the women in this garden whose ages ranged from their 40s to their 80s,” Reuter said.

Smitten with Nan and her friends, whom she came to respect as mother figures, Reuter composed a portrait series of the women who have tended the garden, posed with gardening tools and hats, adding favorite flowers, native butterflies, a child, a cat, a cabin.

Two pieces from Nan’s garden will be hung at the Mountain to Sea exhibit.  Alongside these paintings Reuter also plans to show some of her more recent work.

“I thought it would be cool to show a variety,” Reuter explains. “Some older pieces as well as some of the new techniques I have developed. I think they are pieces that are some of my favorites that I have done, but they do not pigeonhole me.”

One of the newer methods Reuter plans to exhibit for the first time at this show is one she has developed to paint horses. Reluctant to give away her technique’s secret, Reuter explains the importance of this method to her work.

“I am suspending the paint to show the horses’ motion,” she said. “You are stopping time, freezing the moment into the image, but there is all of this motion with the paint, so you get the feeling of that movement, even as the image stands still.”

The Mountain to Sea Exhibit at Acme Art Studio will also feature large-scaled drawings and paintings from Pam Toll, assemblages and ceramics from Gayle Tusin, paintings inspired by his time living in Iraq by Raed Al-Rawi, forest life-cycles by Eric Lawing,  satirical boxes by William Fridrich, and abstract paintings by Dick Roberts.

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