Dare Arts Council Presents 2015 Frank Stick Memorial Art Show

Posted By Matt Artz on February 16, 2015

Dare County Arts Council is pleased to present the 37^th Annual Frank Stick Memorial Art Show. Established in 1978 by Dare County Arts Council, this is the longest running visual art exhibition in the county and includes a wide variety of local fine art, ranging from conceptual to realistic.

An opening reception and awards ceremony will be Saturday, February 21, 2015 from 6-8pm at Glenn Eure’s Ghost Fleet Gallery, located at 210 E. Driftwood Street in Nags Head, NC.

The reception will feature hors d’oeuvres, drinks, and live music by Chape Whitman. Many of the participating artists will also be in attendance. Dare County Arts Council wishes to thank the sponsors, including Ace Hardware, The Beach Book, Cameron House Inn, Greenleaf Gallery, and Saga Construction. Special Glenn Eure’s Ghost Fleet Gallery for hosting this annual show.

Over $2,500 in cash awards will be offered, including Best in Show, Excellence, and Honorable Mention. A People’s Choice award winner will be selected by public ballot during the opening reception. All other cash award winners will be selected by the judge based solely on merit. The 2015 judge is artist Gale Flax.

Gale Flax is an illustrator, printmaker and book artist located in Norfolk, Virginia. Flax received her BA in Medical Illustration from Case Western Reserve University and an MFA in Visual Studies from Old Dominion University and Norfolk State University. She has worked as a commercial artist, editorial art director, publications manager, and college professor.

She now serves as Department Chair for Fine Arts and Humanities at the College of the Albemarle in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Flax grew up in a small coastal community in Maine, surrounded by water and woods. Having now moved more than a dozen times to increasingly urban environments, her own body of work is inspired by found objects that evoke the rural landscape.

She collects ephemera on daily walks — leaves, shells, feathers, bugs — and incorporates those into drawings, and sometimes books. Her themes are transition, displacement, and movement. Whether Flax’s books begin with a printed image, text, inclusions, handmade papers, or binding techniques they all address this tension between order, disorder, and fitting in place. The structure of the book provides a means to impose order, a place for found objects, and a tactile record of experience.

The Frank Stick Memorial Art Show is open to artists who are Dare County residents or members of Dare County Arts Council. The show is open to the public Monday through Saturday, 10am – 5pm, from February 23 – March 20, 2015.