Opening Reception of Mary Conover Solo Show and “Form & Void” with Vicki Lee Johnston and Jim Johnson

Sept. 13, 6 – 8p.m., at The Launchpad in Carbondale
Carbondale Arts presents two exhibitions opening to the public at the R2 Gallery in The Launchpad in Carbondale on Thursday, Sept. 13 from 6 to 8p.m. Based in Aspen, CO, Mary Conover is an abstract artist who explores the symbolism of light in her studio practice of painting, collage, photography, and digital photomontage. The work in her solo exhibition at Carbondale Arts was created during a recent sojourn in the Caribbean where she works several times each year. The work represents a paean to the islands after the devastating destruction from hurricane Irma in the fall of 2017.
In Vicki Lee Johnston’s case, form is created by the accumulation of salvaged barbed wire, woven and coiled to create nest and vase-like forms. Using the admittedly “nasty” and non-art material of barbed wire, Johnston transforms it into organic shapes that convey movement, building form out of space and line. Jim Johnson’s charcoals exist primarily in the cerebral environment of the mind. Creating dark thought-like balloons of white words drawn in a flowing script font, he uses simple and frequently well-known phrases or words to provoke an esthetic experience that ranges from the humorous to the grave. One current theme of the artists has been that of time as reflected in various forms of language. The drawings are like thought pictures. Like Johnston’s sculptures, they endeavor to give physical form to ideas.