Artfolios’ Online Gallery Opens: Featuring 23 artists from the Winston-Salem community

Artfolios, founded by Carrie Leigh Dickey and Kimberly Varnadoe, proudly announces the launch of their online fine art gallery. The gallery includes 23 artists from the Winston-Salem community. 21 of the artists are “Founding Artist” and are pillars to the art community. Two of the artists are “Emerging Artist” and new to the art network. Kimberly Varnadoe, curator, shared: “I am humbled and excited to be trusted to represent these artists and share their work with our patrons.”

FOUNDING ARTIST INCLUDE:

• Ann Bonner is a graduate of Salem College where she majored in Studio Art. She earned her MDiv from Wake Forest University School of Divinity with a focus on art/theology. Her Art/Theology seminars answer the need for the inclusion of the arts as a part of theological education.

• Barbara Lister-Sink (B.A., Smith College’69; Prix d’Excellence, Utrecht Conservatory; Ed. D., Columbia University) is passionate about both music and art. An internationally distinguished pianist and teacher, and a native North Carolinian, she developed an interest in art and art history while majoring in music at Smith College. Lister-Sink creates abstract pastel drawings of the landscapes, seascapes and irises of her native state.

• Barbara Rizza Mellin is an award-winning artist and writer, who has exhibited in one-person and juried, group exhibits throughout the country and internationally. As an art historian (Harvard University), she enjoys reinterpreting traditional techniques for contemporary collectors, using non-toxic, environmentally friendly materials.

• Carl Galie is a North Carolina landscape photographer who for the last 26 years has devoted his work to conservation issues. In 2014 Carl was awarded Wild South’s 6th Annual Roosevelt-Ashe Conservation Award for journalism for his work in the Southern Appalachians.

• Carrie Leigh Dickey is a trained oil painter (BA in studio art with a concentration in oil painting from Salem College), yet she mainly works in acrylics. She loves to create marks with anything that is not a paint brush including her fingers, old credit cards, and aluminum foil.

• Cindy Taplin was born in High Point, NC and has spent most of her life in Forsyth County.  

While she is known for her large-scale acrylic canvases, she also loves to make tiny landscape paintings for Artists in Cellophane to distribute to Art-o-Mat machines across the country.

• Dean Roland Johnson has been painting with passion since childhood. He is particularly fascinated by flowers. They come in innumerable shapes, sizes and colors and present themselves as beautiful opportunities for visual expression. He recently moved to Winston-Salem and now commits his undivided attention to painting.

• Diana Greene is a multimedia artist based in North Carolina, USA. Her photographs and films straddle the world of fine art and documentary. She believes the camera is a way to connect vividly within communities and to the inner landscape within.

• John Mark Lucas has his undergraduate degree in Painting from Guilford College in Greensboro, NC, and his Masters in Painting from New York University. He was a figurative painter until a hit-and-run accident confined him to his NYC apartment for over a year. During that time, he began to take care of some long-neglected plants in his kitchen window.

• Professional architect, lifelong musician, and artist from as far back as he can remember, Kevin G Owen has always been creating on some level. His paintings often have clear architectural roots with strong emphasis on line, form and light and often a bit sci-fi and whimsical. 

• Kevin Wade Calhoun was born and raised in Surry County, NC. When Kevin turned 18, he joined the United States Marine Corps. He left the military at the age of 22 and pursued a business degree at HPU where he took an Art Appreciation class and later a painting class. This was the beginning of a wonderful passion for Kevin that has been a companion, therapist, and creative outlet ever since.

• Kimberly Varnadoe received her BFA in Painting from the University of South Alabama and her MFA in Printmaking from the University of Memphis. Varnadoe works with experimental photography and a variety of printmaking techniques, often combining the processes. She enjoys experimentation and feels that art is most alive during the art making.

• Melrose Tapscott Buchanan is an artist and an educator. She has taught drawing and painting classes and workshops at Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Sawtooth School of Visual Art, and Salem Academy and College. Her art is about the complexity of perception—the art of seeing, believing, and meditating.

• Pat Spainhour is a contemporary artist and art educator. She taught studio art and art history in the WSFC Schools and UNC School of the Arts. Pat has a BFA from UNC Greensboro and graduate studies at Wake Forest University.

• Paul Travis Phillips is a Winston-Salem based conceptually based artist and educator. He earned his MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has exhibited across North Carolina and in New York. Phillips’ work is about philosophy and the limits of language, both written and spoken.

• Comfortably numb describes the work of Scott Sanders. His body of work has a common thread across a range of styles; to seek the essence of minimalism, which can be visually and/or intellectually and always dimensionally suggestive.

• Sharon Hardin has been painting with watercolor for the past three decades. Her work has been exhibited locally, regionally and nationally as well as internationally. She is a past Visiting Artist and Instructor of Design at the North Carolina School of the Arts, Director of the Davis Gallery at Sawtooth School for Visual Art, and Drawing and Design Instructor at Salem College.

• After completing her MFA at Clemson University’s School of Art and Architecture, Terri Dowell-Dennis moved to Winston-Salem to work at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA). She remained there for 17 years. Currently, she is the Associate Curator of Education at the Weatherspoon Art Museum (WAM) at UNCG. Though she works in a variety of media, her current focus is on printmaking and textiles.

• Terry Schupbach-Gordon addresses concepts of identity, fragility and strength in a deeply personal narrative about who we are and how we claim grace. A printmaker and book artist working with images and language seen through the lens of disability. Her prints are a combination of intaglio, woodcut, collage, and letterpress.

• Trena McNabb is a storyteller whose paintings piece together smaller scenes to create one cohesive narrative. She uses many layers of overlapping images to create such a narrative. Thus, each painting weaves together a story. Trena’s most notable works are large-scale, site-specific paintings.

• Will Willner’s passion is learning as much as he can about the medium of photography as possible, and consequently he has produced an eclectic body of work. Although he is “retired,” he continues to photograph and look at photographs every day. 

EMERGING ARTIST INCLUDE:

• Andrew Stenhouse as born in the NorthEast of England. He has had a fascination with abstract art, having dabbled with watercolour in the past, he has recently been drawn in the acrylic flow art as his main medium.

• Hannah Gaskins graduated with a bachelors in Studio Art from the University of North Carolina Wilmington. After graduating, Hannah returned to her hometown of Winston-Salem. She creates pieces inspired by current day events and experiences. Her goal as an artist is to create work that is engaging and evokes emotions, thoughts, and ideas.

To shop Artfolios’ collections visit Artfolios.shop. You can also follow Artfolios on Instagram @shopartfolios and on Facebook @Artfolios.

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ABOUT ARTFOLIOS: Artfolios connects the Triad of North Carolina to a curated collection of Winston-Salem area artists through an online fine art gallery, consultations with patrons, corporate art installations, and in person events featuring Artfolios’ artists.