Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines! There is so much going on in the art world this month that I doubt you can see it all, but you should try your best, because there is some FAB-U-LOUS stuff out there.
Way Down East, The Greenville Museum of Art is hosting a major show of George Bireline. Even though George is no longer with us, his art lives on and it is as vital and energetic as ever. Museum director Barbour Strickland is pulling out all the stops to make sure this is a show to please even the most finicky art aficionados. Speaking of Museums, the cat is out of the bag, Wilmingtons Cameron Museum just appointed Deborah Velders as director, taking over from the late great Reynolds Brown. Velders brings decades of real world blue chip experience. (She was in charge of the famous Menil collection in Houston, as well as watching over the Smithsonian Institutions American Art Museum in Washington DC now that's a resume.) While you are there in Wilmington, take a peak at the great art on display by Rick McClure, a gentleman who obviously knows his way around a palette. His work is on display at the lovely Fountainside Gallery that later in the month hosts new paintings by Charleston artist Tami Cardnella. That showing should be lots of fun.
Just a hop, skip and jump up the coast from Wilmington, Beaufort is getting all jazzed up for the Beaufort Wine and Food Weekend, April 13-16. It will showcase wineries and winemakers from around the world, and the galleries are all right there in the thick of things. Beaufort Fine Art will be especially festive, so pop your head in and see what the wine gods have inspired.
Here in Raleigh, the elegant and talented Ashlynn Browning will be presenting a new series of creations at Lee Hansley Gallery. Ashlynns work is like calligraphy, like a dance. It reminds me of Twombly, of the orientrugged mental landscapes and the gentle scratchings of ghosts. Al and Suzy Newsom of Blue Brazil and the groovy folks at Rebus Works have joined forces to further international art exchange and culture. Their first joint exhibition, La Imagen Amable de mi Misma or A Kind of Image of Myself, features Bolivian artist Alejandra Dorado, as well as images by the Brazilians Marlice Almeida, Sandra Felzen, Adriano Fagundes and sculpture by Oficina de Agosto.
Chapel Hill and Carrboro don't intend to be left out in the cold. Sizl Gallery presents the show 2 Good Friends 2 Extraordinary Artists, featuring the artwork of Tony Award winner and Guggenheim fellowship holder Geoffrey Holder, along with the funky and free paintings of Jim Moon, who was instrumental in the development of the fine arts department at the NC School of the Arts.
Animation and Fine Art Gallery has trotted out some amazing Giacomettis that you may want to consider for your home. His lines look so modern even after all these decades that I fall all over myself trying to take in his sculpture at the NC Museum of Art. Turning Point Gallery is getting a lot of mileage from the colorful work of Brit Simon Bull, who recently hopped the puddle to do some first-hand meeting and greeting at the gallery while he personalized purchasesnothing wrong with a little marketing know-how.
And last but definitely not least, I want to send my congratulations to his eminence Wayne Trapp who once again has presented an amazing body of fresh work at Tyndall Galleries. I have known Wayne for a long time and he has always been just what you want an artist to be, wild when he needs to be, free-wheeling when he feels like it, serious and hard working when the bills come due, and ALWAYS a gentleman. Wayne might not be the youngest bird in the chicken coop, but he can hold his own in any gallery he sets foot in, and his eye for design and color is as sharp as ever. I want to be just like him when I grow up.