Three artists with entirely different artistic approaches have collaborated to present “Capturing Light,” an exhibit at the Hillsborough Gallery of Art that runs until Oct. 20.
“It’s three different artists combined in one show, and it melds beautifully,” Pringle Teetor said, a creator of blown glass and one of the artists in the show. “It’s not like you’re combining three people who do landscape paintings.”
Teetor said it’s in this way the exhibit is united.
“For all of us, light is a common theme,” Eduardo Lapetina said. Lapetina is the abstract painter of the trio.
The third artist, Lolette Guthrie, is primarily a landscape painter. The artists are all part-owners and member artists of the gallery, which allows them the freedom to choose which works they want to show. They said they plan to display more than 50 works.
Teetor said that when 2D and 3D artists collaborate, themes don’t necessarily apply to all mediums. This makes it difficult to find a common theme.
“I hope they can enjoy seeing three completely different types of artists’ work that combines in a setting,” she said.
The idea of capturing the transient quality of light came about from an NPR interview Guthrie once heard, he said. The interview discussed famed Depression-era photographer Walker Evans, who was quoted saying, “The truly hard part (of photography) is capturing the light in the air.”
Guthrie said she took Evans’ statement to heart, trying to capture that ephemeral light for just one moment.
“I try to get a feeling of light and atmosphere in the image, and I try to capture the image in a way that it’s timeless,” Guthrie said.
Teetor, who said she recently finished the cold work for the glass during the summer heat, said she is perhaps most fond of her sandblasted series. “You sandblast the surface so it becomes more matte,” she said. “It holds the light, and the pieces tend to glow instead of reflecting the light.”
“I use a lot of color in one small piece, so it’s like a large abstract painting, but working with molten glass,” Teetor said.
Lapetina said he tries to invoke the feeling of happiness with his colorful paintings.
“What I do is work with very transparent paint [that] reflects a lot of light, and there are many different colors, and the combination of those different colors with the kind of paint I use produces a light effect,” he said.
“These are all abstract paintings and people get different feelings about them. They have different interpretations. I tell people that what they see, that’s what it is. In reality, the viewer makes the paintings.”
arts@dailytarheel.com
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