DARKE COUNTY — Historic Bear’s Mill is hosting an exhibit in the Clark Gallery from now through Sunday, July 23, featuring the surreal narrative paintings of Dayton resident Amy Kollar Anderson and delicate hand blown glass vessels created by Jim DeLange of Cedarville.
Marti Goetz, Executive Director of Friends of Bear’s Mill, says that this will be a fun exhibit, full of creativity and delightfully diverse images. “Amy’s fantastic work is rich in detail and filled with imagination, provoking thoughtful examination as well as immediate delight, as do Jim’s luminously lovely vessels which assume many forms and encompass all the colors of the rainbow,” Goetz said.
Amy Kollar Anderson enjoys the process of creating completely new environments with each painting, constantly creating her own rules about colors and interactions while overlapping vintage and modern design elements, including nontraditional paint choices and materials such as glitter and metal foil. The energetic artist began painting in her early teens, received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and earned a Master of Humanities with a focus in Fine Arts at Wright State University. Although she has experimented with many different art forms, Amy says that her most vital form of expression is painting, which enables her to twist reality and explore color and narratives in a way that other mediums don’t permit.
Native Iowan Jim DeLange, a former school guidance counselor who for many years also worked as a freelance photographer as well as with stained glass, started blowing glass in 2007 and instantly knew that he had discovered a new passion. “Glass in its liquid form offers endless possibilities that combine color and shape which results in a finished product that begs to be touched,” the artist explains. “I am mesmerized as I watch the liquid glass take form beneath the touch of my hand and exhilarated when I hold the finished piece in my hands for the first time; I want others to share that excitement,” DeLange said.
“Art at the Mill” continues at Bear’s Mill’s Clark Gallery through December, with a new exhibit opening on the Final Friday of each month.
