Art Walk Features Regional Artists

By Bill Sontag
bill.sontag@delrionewsherald.com
Staff Writer, Del Rio News-Herald

Reprinted with permission of the Del Rio News-Herald
Published November 2, 2005

Five galleries and a community center will place local art high on the monthly pedestal of the First Friday Art Walk this weekend.

Art lovers, casual or serious, will have the unique opportunity to view more than 120 works executed by 30 artists influenced by time spent in Del Rio, Comstock, Bracketville, and at Lake Amistad.

Most artists teach simply by producing their work and putting it on display, but the Casa De La Cultura, 302 Cantu St., on Brown Plaza, has gone a step further this month.

An exhibit of 13 art teachers from the San Felipe Del Rio Consolidated Independent School District will show off the talents of those whose influence is not limited to the classroom.

Moreover, director Maria Sorola and curator Sally Donnelly have reserved space on the glowing walls of the Casa gallery for eight works of Del Rio's first art teacher, Leslie Schmidt.

Schmidt, 83, grandson of an early Del Rio mayor, Cyrus Chastain, followed his early years in Del Rio with a globe-trotting career with the U.S. Department of State, but came back to Del Rio for work at Laughlin Air Force Base and the school district, before his retirement years.

He and his wife Lavonne frequent nearly every First Friday Art Walk and any other cultural event in the city.

The works on display include stone lithographs, oil on canvas, and watercolor on paper.

Casa De La Cultura will also be sharing limelight honors for a small exhibit of drawings by Karen Aqua, Amistad National Recreation Area artist-in-residence.

Aqua's drawings will also be shown in an improvised gallery space at the Del Rio Council for the Arts' Firehouse Gallery, 120 E. Garfield St.

Aqua's works are selected from a sequence of drawings for her animated film, "Ground Zero/ Sacred Ground," based on ancient petroglyphs of New Mexico.

The film will receive a premier showing in Del Rio at the Firehouse later this fall.

The Del Rio Council for the Arts feature exhibition in the Firehouse Gallery this month is an exhibition of provocative glazed clay sculptures by San Antonio artist Lyn Woods.

Woods' tall vase-like vessels are—well—erotic in both form and color.

She characterizes her work as "my response to the emotional fragmentation and estrangement from nature that are common to modern life."

Nothing X- or even R-rated here, but the suggestive titles, such as "Secret Surprise," "Kissed," "Tenderness of Touch," "Ripe," and "Recline/Decline" are only hints of the sensuous shapes and textures that will top Firehouse pedestals Friday night.

Woods is adjunct faculty member of the prestigious Southwest School of Art and Craft, San Antonio, but she educated her potter's hands on the wheels of the Firehouse, and served there on the board of directors, 1992–1993.

Garden of Arts Gallery at Amistad Florist, 307 Veterans Blvd., opens the November exhibition with the oils and scratchboard works of Fort Clark artist Elizabeth Gibbs.

She considers herself a newcomer to art, beginning at age 65. But Gibbs is 79, and accomplished in landscapes, animal themes and architectural subjects.

"I don't consider myself good, I just do it for fun, but I do paint every day," Gibbs said Tuesday. Art walk patrons should see her work, judge for themselves, and get to know this lively lady.

The Lee-Bunch Studio and Gallery, 100 W. Greenwood St., on the second floor above Del Rio Loan Company, has another unique and informative exhibition, the rock art renderings and fine art pastels and paintings of Dr. Carolyn Boyd.

Boyd, director of the Shumla School, situated on the Harrington Ranch about 17 miles north of Comstock, was an artist before she became a professor at Texas A&M University.

The experience armed her for an understanding of art history, and plunged her into studies of art in pre-historic times, eventually positioning Boyd as a respected author on the ancient rock art of the Lower Pecos region.

Vevilu Gallery, 507 E. Gibbs St., will feature about 20 works of Nena Castro, cross stitch artist from Del Rio. Castro's works include landscapes, religious images, floral art and architectural subjects.

The Grounds, a Christian teen and youth club, 120 W. Losoya, is a newcomer to the First Friday Art Walk venue.

Though not yet a member of the heArt of Del Rio consortium of galleries that organizes and promotes the First Friday Art Walk, The Grounds hopes to attract art patrons interested in what teens there have produced.

The heArt of Del Rio gallery managers, with the graphic assistance of Mike and Sally Donnelly at Color Wizardry of Del Rio, have produced a useful brochure for art walk patrons.

The small, but colorful publication includes address and telephone information for all participating galleries, a photo of each building, and an easy-to-read map showing the location of each.

The upshot is that if art walk participants find only one gallery described here, they can pick up this brochure to guide them to all the rest.

Both the brochure and admission to all galleries are free, and refreshments are served at each location during the First Friday Art Walk core hours, 7–9 p.m.