Jewelry by Diana Alexander is part of the new Toe River Arts exhibition.
Waking Dream, a new exhibition featuring oil paintings by Allison Edge and jewelry (body adornments) by Diana Alexander, is at the Toe River Arts Kokol Gallery in Spruce Pine from Sept. 23 through Oct. 21.
Waking Dream refers to the experience of seeing the outside world in low-lit, half-lit or fog-obscured scenarios, evoking a dream-like quality and straddling the boundaries of familiarity and unknowns.
Edge’s ethereal paintings will set the stage and atmosphere for the exhibition. The paintings include landscapes and nature images at night, at twilight, in fog or mist or a combination of these conditions.
She has been collecting photographic references as source imagery for these paintings, including scenes from Western North Carolina, the South Carolina coast, Florida and Costa Rica. Some images are pinned with stars or artificial light sources, often indistinguishable from one another.
Edge grew up in Charlotte and got her BFA in Painting from the University of Georgia and an MFA from UNC-Greensboro. She moved to New York City to pursue her career as an artist and lived in Brooklyn for 19 years.
During those nearly two decades, she assisted several international artists, including Jeff Koons, Roxy Paine and Aaron Young. She relocated to the Black Mountains in 2019.
Body adornments have been worn by humans for thousands of years and by virtually every culture on the planet. They play an important symbolic role in the lives of many cultures.
In Alexander’s Waking Dream series, she aims to create adornments that mesh with the environment created by her paintings. Somewhere between reality and myth, shadow and breaking light, how would you adorn yourself in an atmosphere evoked by these dream-like qualities, darkened but glistening with muted color, shadowed but alive with movement?
The adornments are dramatic and show Alexander’s expertise in the field of jewelry making. Alexander retired from nursing and moved to Burnsville seven years ago.
The move has enabled her to devote her time and creativity to her jewelry career.
“my work will always be in process as I strive to learn new techniques and incorporate them, along with the experiences of life in the mountains, into my work,” she said.
There will be a public reception Friday, Sept. 29 from 5-7 p.m. Toe River Arts is at 269 Oak Ave., Spruce Pine and the gallery and gift shop hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.