art treatise
harvest tide By Giovan Michael
A recently formed art cooperative puts on its fall show
RT can bring people from all walks of life together. Sometimes this
connection can create strong friendships. When the connection
is strong enough, an entire movement, cooperative, or gallery
can even be formed.
This is what happened for the six women who formed
Gallery Citrine in 2019. Coming from wildly different non-artistic careers such
as finance, education, and human services, the women bonded over the joys
and struggles of creating art and growing as artists.
Gallery Citrine is a cooperative where new and veteran artists can work
and display their work.
“Artists only need a few things to really be happy,” says founding member
Meroe Wheatley. “First, they need to be making art and feeling like they are
working toward making the best art they can. Second, they need to have a
space to share their art with others. We’re hoping to support both established
and emerging artists by providing a curated gallery which gives them a place
to share their art with the community in a professional way.”
The beautiful space on South 2nd Street in Wilmington’s historic down-town
acts as a gallery and showroom — currently displaying the coopera-tive’s
fall show, titled “Harvest Tide” — and a working studio for 10 artists.
The building was renovated by Donna Launey and her husband, Patrick Tester,
and now the light-filled gallery shines just like a citrine (a transparent, yellow
variety of quartz).
Like many of us, the folks at Gallery Citrine made optimistic plans in 2019
that had to be postponed in 2020.
“One of the original concepts of Citrine was to have workshops and classes,
which of course have been tabled because of the COVID-19 crisis,” Wheatley
says. “On top of that, a number of local shows such as the Azalea Festival art
show, the Landfall art show, and the Art in the Garden show at the Arboretum
have been canceled or are only being done online, which has significantly
changed the opportunity for in-person artist exposure.”
The gallery is creating a schedule of juried theme shows to help provide
actual gallery exposure opportunities that so many artists have been missing
this year.
“Our first show is Harvest Tide, which began in early September and will run
through the holiday season,” Wheatley says. “The co-op jury committee has
chosen 25 works from 16 different artists, some established and some emerg-ing,
to showcase the changes autumn brings here on the Carolina coast.”
Here’s a sneak peek at some of the original art on display at Harvest Tide.
november 2020
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