After weeks of holiday decorating and celebrating at artCentral and at home, my husband David and I spent the last seven days of our winter break prepping and packaging our collaborative exhibition for spring. We are excited to share our mixed media extravaganza with you! Please mark your new year’s calendars and come join us for SIGNS & WONDERS to be on view at Hyde House April 1 through May 14, 2022.
We have finished, catalogued and photographed all our exhibition artworks to be posted on social media as SIGNS & WONDERS draws closer. We send out our grateful “thank you” to board member Maddie Capps for sharing her professional photography skills and spending an afternoon doing a photo shoot with us and our creations in the galleries. The graphics for the posters and invitations are in development.
Nearing a wrap on this major endeavor, I told David, “I need to hike up and down among trees with vistas overlooking water.” That evening he read me a passage from Rich Roll’s “Voicing Change” about the importance of breathing in diverse biospheres. The next day we discovered artful wonders in the woods as we breathed our way over an up-and-down path with many a vista above the winding creek below us.
Fresh air+Deep breathing+Soaking up the artful offerings of winter’s beauty—lichen encrusted logs; vibrant, green mosses surrounded by fallen brown leaves and dustings of snow; and deep waters reflecting brilliant blue skies and the alabaster limbs of majestic sycamores arching over.
Rambling outdoors our brains found multisensory balm—exactly what our fatigued nervous and stressed hormonal systems needed most to regain the equilibrium of our homeostasis.
The restorative effects of time spent walking in the natural world at the beginning of this new year has stayed with us—resourcing our bodies, minds and spirits with beautiful vistas of art come before and art yet to come. With refreshed clarity and incredible gratitude we are ready to revisit, review and reflect on the events of the past year and to positively vision the new months waiting before us.
2021 was a transformative year. Continuing to follow CDC protocols supporting artCentral’s certification by the Missouri Arts Council as an ArtSafe Space, we welcomed the gradual unfolding of activities earlier curtailed by pandemic limitations. A full roster of exhibitions opened with tremendous anticipation and great success, conjured by the participating artists and artCentral’s faithful community of supporters. In lieu of July’s Summer artCamp for Youth, Screen-Free 3rd Saturday mini artCamps were offered.
Spring and autumn welcomed the arrival of grants given by the Carthage Community Foundation and the Community Foundation of the Ozarks. Winter brought a grant from the Carthage Area United Way for artCamp 2022. Closing out 2021, the Holiday Boutique filled the galleries with a splendid array of art and artful giftables while raising funds to support artCentral’s future programs and community outreach.
Looking out from today, we see art and art and more art filling the vista of artCentral’s new year. VERDANT, this year’s mixed media collection presented by the Joplin Regional Artists Coalition, will open February 4, followed by April’s SIGNS & WONDERS and a full year filled with extraordinary art by artCentral artists. The Art of our Vista is before us!
