2007-2008 EXHIBITING VISUAL ARTISTS
Educational Outreach | Photo Gallery
Traci Mims-Jones :: Exhibiting Friday, September 21, 2007
Traci Mims-Jones was born in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1966 and moved to Jacksonville in 1991. She earned a bachelor of fine arts in studio art from Florida A&M University and an M.F.A. from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art. She teaches art at Jean Ribault Senior High School.
It was not always Mims-Jones intent to become a professional artist. She spent her first two years in college studying architecture. After taking a few drawing classes, however, she decided to change become a fine artist. Although trained as a printmaker, she works mostly in mixed media, quilting, painting, and assemblage using found materials.
Mims-Jones enjoys creating work that is narrative in nature and provokes thought about social or cultural issues. She believes in art that begins with emotion and she is influenced by music, poetry and anything that encourages a multidisciplinary approach to art. She uses symbolism in her pieces because she believes that it is important to leave something to the viewer’s own imagination and judgment. Several years ago Mims-Jones began making quilts, adding another art form to her resume, which is how she now spends most of her time creating.
Traci Mims-Jones's work:
Vincent Dolan :: Exhibiting Sunday, October 14, 2007
Vincent Dolan’s passion for art began in kindergarten in Pawtucket, RI. After completing his formal education and twenty-nine years as a Special Agent with the Secret Service and U.S. Customs, Dolan was finally able to return to his passion. His life and travel experiences and exposure to new art and cultures have inspired much of his paintings.
Dolan’s painting taps into the intellect through emotion and dream imagery. He explores and experiments, reaching “beyond memory into aboriginal emotional energy.” Realism is not intended and meaning is interpreted. Dolan captures lines, forms and spirit in symbolic figures, landscapes and animals. He sees the natural harmony of the design and aspires to epitomize honesty and truth in his representations.
On a summer study in Ireland at the Burren College of Art in County Clare, Dolan was finally able to connect Irish landscape painting with abstract painting. The spatial stillness of the Burren provided Dolan the opportunity to reflect and renew his creativity. His ancestral home, Ireland offered Dolan a way to explore his roots and his painting simultaneously.
Dolan recently returned to Cork, Ireland, for a six-week international artist’s residency at the Cork Printmakers. He came away with very specific concepts involving two separate and distinct processes using deep etching and simultaneous color printing which he plans to pursue in his studio practice.
While studying at the Atlanta College of Art, Dolan explored printmaking. He mastered the new techniques with the creation of a completely handmade book of the Celtic alphabet. He now applies these skills to his work.
Vincent Dolan's work:
Keith Doles :: Exhibiting Sunday, November 4, 2007
Jacksonville native Keith Doles graduated from the University of North Florida with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Graphic Design in 2001. His work includes graphic design, painting, and wood sculpture. Doles creates with a childlike and energetic spirit, using geometric shapes and organic forms and merging them into work that feeds the mind with wonder, reflection, and question.
Doles takes an economical and environmental approach to creating art by using discarded wood and metal to produce abstract sculptures of the human form. The artists says that he began to better understand Cézanne’s theory that the basic shapes in nature are the sphere, cone, and cylinder when he started to build sculptures from found objects. Dole’s appreciation of the principles of design, including balance, unity, value, color and texture, grew as he created forms using aluminum, brass and plastic. His statues are generally held together by screws, glue, or thin aluminum rods which act as a skeleton to hold joints in place.
In 2005, Doles earned a Master of Arts degree in Business from Webster University, learning how to incorporate marketing strategies with his designs and exhibitions. A freelance graphic designer, Doles creates logos and illustrations, drawing his own images and arranging fonts to fit a client’s personality.
Doles has exhibited at the Ritz Theatre and LaVilla Museum in Jacksonville and The Arts Center in St. Petersburg. He has worked as an illustrator for an aspiring author and had a pen and ink illustration published in Impact Press magazine in 2002. Doles’ work has been presented in art galleries in St. Augustine, St. Petersburg, and Jacksonville and can be found in private collections and public institutions.
Cookie Davis :: Exhibiting November 30, 2007
Cookie Davis began studying art at the age of seven and never lost the desire or enthusiasm to experiment. After drawing and painting for many years she had the opportunity to make a clay piece at a friend's house. Soon after Davis put the paints away and began to explore clay.
A Jacksonville native, Ms. Davis believes in making art and in shaping art in her community. As a member of several professional organizations, she works to promote young and emerging artists. Davis is active with Art and Soul, a program through the Women's Center of Jacksonville that promotes regional women in the arts, and is president of brAIDS/ARTreach, a nonprofit community group that awards grants in Northeast Florida for furthering education, prevention and awareness of HIV/AIDS.
Davis’s sculptures are usually figurative and are of women, many of whom are from New Orleans or Africa. Davis says that all the women she creates are from her heart and are black, brown or white — the colors of the world. Davis’s figures are what she calls "story people." They wear bright clothes and sometimes speak too loudly and sometimes not loudly enough. They are single and strong and, as a group, they are powerful.
Since 1972 Davis has been exhibiting throughout the southeastern United States. Her work is included in national and international collections.
Leigh Murphy :: Exhibiting January 6, 2008
Leigh Murphy has participated in 20 museum exhibitions around the country and has won 109 awards in art competitions including Region 1 winner of the National Parks Academy of the Arts "Arts for the Parks" national competition and Grand Prize and honorable mention winner of the Watercolor Magic magazine's national water media competition. She is the youngest member of the Florida Watercolor Society to receive a signature membership and was inducted into Who's Who of American Women by merit of achievements in art.
Murphy believes that the medium of watercolor is exhilarating in its ability to produce rich brilliant color and its capacity for incredibly fine detail and varied textures. Murphy’s goal is to convey the same sense of sublime meditative beauty that she feels when she creates her art. She enjoys the challenge of depicting the difficult shapes, light effects, and textures that appear in her work. Her favorite paintings are always her most recent ones. She finds that she has to complete a new one to be able to let the last one go.
Amandine Benomar :: Exhibiting February 22, 2008
Amandine Benomar was born in Paris, France and has lived in the United States for seven years. Her mother is from Vienna, Austria and her father is from Morocco. She speaks French, German, English and Spanish. She plans to graduate from the University of North Florida in 2008 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography.
Benomar is very passionate about the medium of photography, which reflects her personality, energy, passion and style. Benomar has a passion for fashion photography. Her goal is to become a fashion photographer in New York City and to travel the world doing exotic photo shoots.
Yvonne Lozano :: Exhibiting March 14, 2008
Yvonne Lozano is a 1995 graduate of the Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. She earned her B.F.A. from Jacksonville University in 2001.
Born in New Orleans, Lozano’s artwork reflects a lot about her life, whether a specific event or something she loves. Much of her work documents her memories of New Orleans and the short time she spent in Colombia, SC. Her work reads like a coloring book: very simple images with a child-like theme.
Creating art gives Lozano peace of mind. She likes to incorporate all different types of media into her work, such as acrylic, charcoal, silicone, printmaking, watercolor and collage. For the more emotionally detailed memories, she combines techniques.
Lozano’s inspiration comes from learning new things about the world or seeing something for the first time. The learning process keeps her interested in making art. She hopes to that soon she will be able to include traveling as one of her means of learning and seeing the world.
Yvonne Lozano's work:
