These 'Choice' artists to be recognized during closing reception Saturday at GO ART!
Photo by Howard Owens
When Thea Anderson was working through her recovery program more than a year ago, she wasn’t thinking about claiming an award for the art. She was learning to relieve stress.
Yet Zentangle — a structured drawing method of creating repetitive patterns and intricate designs — served the purpose of helping her relax, focus and produce something that others have come to appreciate. In fact, her piece, “Recovery Tryptic,” won the People’s Choice Award at a new GO ART! Members/Staff Exhibit.
“These pieces kind of represent how far I’ve come in my life,” Anderson said during an interview with The Batavian. “And it’s pretty amazing to have been chosen by a lot of people.”
Anderson is one of three artists to be presented with an award this weekend. The public is invited for a free closing reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Saturday to view the artwork, meet her and artists Rebecca Graham and Jodi Fisher, and help celebrate their awards. This event is at GO ART!, 201 E. Main St., Batavia. Refreshments will be served.
A resident of Batavia, Anderson decided to enter a 28-day rehab program, and during that time, she rediscovered her love of art. While she had pursued acrylics previously, she said her latest medium is pen-and-ink. This three-piece work, the tryptic, fits together in one matted frame of a large white flower against a Zentangle background design.
“So I discovered Zentangle. It’s a form of art and meditation, and I really liked that because I was going through the recovery process, which I’m still doing. So these pieces kind of helped me with my anxiety and depression. I was an alcoholic. So it was an addiction. I was in a program to get well, and I've been sober for about, I think, 15 months now. I didn't do art for a really long time when I was sick in my addiction, and then as I got better, I started to realize how it was helping me with my anxiety and with dealing with a mental health disorder.”
She wants to share some of her story with hope that it might encourage others to seek help if they are struggling as she did. Anderson is proud of her sobriety as she remembers how she felt 15 months ago. It’s also how to describe her artwork.
“A blank white flower is how I felt,” she said. “It was like I was rediscovering and also creating a new me.”
It took her 20 hours per individual piece, for a total of 60 hours working at her makeshift studio space at her dining room table. She became a GO ART! member a year ago and also volunteered along with her fiancé, Kyle Moore. They befriended Executive Director Gregory Hallock, she said.
Visitors to the exhibit were asked to vote on a favorite for the People’s Choice from Dec. 12 to Jan. 31. Anderson was “honored” to be selected out of several pieces, she said.
“So many opportunities have opened for us because of GO ART!,” she said. “We’re very grateful for Gregory, for taking a chance on us. I was shocked, I was so happy to have created something that I wanted to share with people. I had no thoughts of winning anything.
“Like I said, it represents how far I've come, and to have a tangible creation to show for the time that I spent kind of doing the work, the inner work, all the stuff that you have to go through and explore when you're in the process of recovery,” she said. “Even to have something to show was such an amazing accomplishment for me, and then winning. It's just, it's amazing.”
She and Moore have a work in progress on the second floor of the nonprofit, she said. They are painting a small ceiling area with a floral scene that will eventually be lit. Since beginning recovery, she has strengthened confidence, stronger focus and steadier hands, she said.
“When people are in addiction, they try to fix the problem with substance,” she said. “Sometimes, it was an undiagnosed mental health disorder. I chose to medicate. I think that’s what people need to understand, that people who are in recovery or addicts, you have to address all those mental health issues … the person is just trying to get through life.”
GO ART! President Linda Knipe chose Rebecca Graham’s black and white portrait of “Indian Girl” for the President’s Award. A page filled largely with a child’s eyes and rounded cheeks, this genre is challenging, Graham said.
“Children are especially hard to get that child look to them without looking alien,” she said.
She won a few awards in high school, and that fueled her continued interest in the arts, with an affinity for graphite, charcoal or colored pencil, and trying to get more comfortable with mixed media, including paints.
She won an award in school also for a pen-and-ink of a sports car, and enjoys that kind of three-dimensional detail work, she said. A respiratory therapist who has enjoyed the healthcare field for the last 30 years, Graham looks forward to having her artwork as a “nice hobby” at some point in semi-retirement.
“I am able to challenge myself to see if you practice enough, you’ll get better,” she said. “It’s a challenging thing to see how good I can get. Once I’m able to spend more time, I’ll be able to take commissions.”
A resident of Le Roy, she likes to do people and pet portraits and would like to get back to those eventually while exploring various mediums, she said. The competition was stiff with some amazing members for this exhibit, she said.
“You’re hopeful, and you think it’s good, but it’s like the lottery,” she said. “My sister has been a big inspiration. Some of the work I had done when I was in high school, she’s confiscated it and it hangs in her house. It’s sort of like, well, she definitely thinks I do good, and she’s intelligent, so I thought it’s worth continuing, right? It validates that feeling of its worthiness.”
The Curator’s Award went to Jodi Fisher of Batavia, who is both a member and GO ART!’s program director and statewide regrant co-coordinator.
Fisher’s work was yet in another medium — photography. She captured the scene two years ago while at Genesee Country Village Museum during a yuletide dinner and tour by candlelight. The scenario depicted a Scottish American home with no electricity, which provided the luminescent glow and shadows that Fisher is drawn to, she said.
“So that was really exciting, I got to see a place that I hadn't been in, but they were talking about their Scottish celebration for New Year's Eve, and I saw the shadows on the table with the lanterns. And it just was, I don't know, it really resonated with me,” she said. “When I put in I didn’t realize it was going to be judged, I just brought in some of my work because it was a staff and member show. So it was actually a surprise to me when (staff) told me that I had won an award.”
Her main art is in the literary field, with poetry and prose, and she only more recently began snapping photos with her iPhone 13 mini.
“I really love the vibrancy of nature. I would consider myself mostly a nature photographer. I love light and shadows and color, and when I see something to me that looks very vibrant and alive, I like to try and capture that and share that with other people,” she said, describing why the table scene drew her attention. “The shadows and the simplicity of pre-electricity there’s a lot of depth and meaning in it.”
The photo is simple enough, but also with details that strike against the darkness and a smooth linen tablecloth set with two lanterns. Shadows emerge from varying positions around the lanterns and a coffee mug, and there seems to be a faint stream of light possibly from a nearby window.
Fisher had a show two years ago combining both of her passions, prose and photos, and would “love to show my work more,” she said. There may also be a book of her poems in the future.
Photo by Howard Owens
Photo by Howard Owens
Photo by Howard Owens
