Dr. Richard Panico spoke to a standing room only audience at Lyndon House Arts Center on Sept. 22. The program lived up to its title Art, Healing, Wisdom. He presented slide after slide of wonderful art, and if laughter is the best medicine, we all had lots of healing. While Panico denied that he was giving us "timeless wisdom," his talk was full of personal stories about living life, how the brain works and thought provoking quotes from scientists and philosophers.
Even for a listener whose drawing has not progressed beyond scribbles on paper, there are plenty of suggestions for ways to appreciate art and perhaps for many, how to look at life. A practicing artist will also enjoy hearing about his process in drawing with pastels and ink, and his experimentation with surfaces.
Peter Muzyka's love for the rural landscape began when he grew up on a sheep farm in Pennsylvania. As an adult, seeing abandoned and deteriorating farm houses and barns pulled on his heartstrings. For years now, he's been recording this vanishing history with egg tempera and oil paintings as well as drawings and photographs.
"It's like the farmers and their families left their spirits behind," Pete comments, in his story of Abandoned Rural America, which includes plenty of images from Georgia. Pete also shows an audience of Athens Art Association members some artworks of Lisa Whaler, Don Jolley, John Dyer and Blake Smith on the same theme.
He has scheduled a series of exhibitions, and with each exhibit he invites other artists who also describe the rural landscape. He is expanding the show adding other media, and it now includes three dimensional work and video.
