Posted on

CCAC featured artists to explore ‘beyond the mythic and mundane’

CCAC featured artists to explore ‘beyond the mythic and mundane’
Alexis Buecler, Elizabeth Powell and Emily Magnuson will be the featured talent in July, starting July 1 and running through July 30. The CCAC will host an opening reception for the three on Friday this week, from 5-7 p.m. The exhibit, entitled, “Beyond the Mythic & Mundane,” is a three-person exhibition of paintings, prints, and ceramics. (Photo submitted.)
By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Art patrons in Charles City will get to enjoy three artists for the price of one in the month of July at the Charles City Arts Center.

Artists Alexis Buecler, Elizabeth Powell and Emily Magnuson will be the featured talent in July, starting July 1 and running through July 30. The CCAC will host an opening reception for the three on Friday this week, from 5-7 p.m.

The exhibit, entitled, “Beyond the Mythic & Mundane,” is a three-person exhibition of paintings, prints and ceramics.

Beucler is an artist currently residing in Mason City, where she is the visual arts instructor and gallery coordinator at North Iowa Area Community College. She was born and raised in Florida where she studied studio art and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Florida State University. She currently holds her Master of Fine Arts in painting and drawing from the University of Iowa, with secondary focuses in printmaking and book arts.

“My current body of work comprises of a series of paintings and artist books that build a world, magical and real, liminal and intersexual,” Buecler said. “This world explores identity, sexuality, human futility, anxiety, passion, love.”

Powell is a printmaker in Iowa City. She is currently teaching at the University of Iowa where she is pursuing her MFA in printmaking. She was raised in Vermont where she received her undergraduate degree in both the fine arts and economics from the University of Vermont.

Powell said her work is composed of abstract shapes and patterns.

“The imagery comes from a lexicon of figures that I began developing when I was briefly immobilized by an illness,” she said. “Experiencing the physical limitations, I instinctively began to draw and abstract the shape of my own body to reconnect with it and to reclaim it.”

Magnuson is a ceramic artist in Iowa City, and teaches art at Iowa City West High School. She said her current work is greatly impacted by her cancer diagnosis.

“The way I think, feel, live, dream and create have all changed since cancer,” she said. “I feel like those three years of hell completely changed who I am as a person.”

Magnuson is a native Iowan, and returned to Iowa from New York City when she leaned of her diagnosis. She said she is still finding herself through her artwork.

“I am currently working with ceramics, silk painting, and public art painting,” Magnuson said. “I discovered ceramic wheel throwing while recovering from colon cancer and the hypnotic effect of the pottery wheel zoned my mind into the craft so much that I forgot about my pain. Once I experienced that I couldn’t stop, and have been using ceramic art as a form of active meditation ever since.”

Social Share

LATEST NEWS