Elizabeth Invites Community Collaboration in Latest Art Exhibition
To see the results of this exhibit, visit our Into The Light page HERE.
You are invited to step “Into the Light” in an exiting interactive art exhibit July 5-25 at the Gateway Arts Center in Mt Sterling, KY. Artist and photographer Elizabeth Shatner, wife of actor William Shatner, has created a dynamic, colorful show exploring the relationship of the audience with nature, technology and their community. The centerpiece of the exhibit is a larger-than-life digital projection that the viewers are encouraged to actually become a part of. After stepping directly into the projected image, you can use your smartphone to snap a selfie of yourself covered in color and light (thus creating your own new piece of digital art). Then, you get to collaborate with Mrs. Shatner by uploading those selfies to a special digital gallery on the artist’s web site. Through what Mrs. Shatner calls “Exponential Art”, this process not only expands the exhibit out from the physical gallery into the global “cloud” and other manifestations of our shared realities, but also from these uploads Mrs. Shatner will create an original crowd-sourced artwork that directly reflects the community from which it originated (in this case, specifically the visitors to the Gateway gallery). In fact, on display throughout the month will be two brand new pieces, abstract “photographic patchwork quilts” incorporating the selfies uploaded by visitors while the projection was installed at the Art Museum at the University of Kentucky earlier this year.
The exhibit expands further into the realm of, “bringing photography to life,” (as Mrs. Shatner puts it) with the display of haute couture gowns created by Lexington Fashion Collaborative’s Designer of the Year, Mauricio Crane. Inspired by the play of light and shape in Mrs. Shatner’s Into the Light digital projection piece, Mr. Crane’s one-of-a-kind designs employ vivid colors and exotic fabrics to create light that is actually wearable.
Mrs. Shatner’s philosophy of Exponential Art will expand throughout the exhibit in a blend of other new and previous works of digital painting and photography that play off the audience’s experience of light and that expose the inspirational ways nature reflects the human themes of life, death, healing and rebirth. During the Artist’s Reception on July 13th, 5pm-7pm, Mrs. Shatner will be in town to create a new piece in real time in direct interaction with the reception attendees. A new twist on an old theme from the art-science of psychology, her process called “Flowrschach” elicits the audience’s free-flowing emotions and interpretations in response to several photographs and then incorporates them directly onto a canvas.
Other works on display range from stunning photo-real images of flowers and nature scenes, to a hands-on piece utilizing 900 LED lights, to digitally-painted canvas works in which the artist highlights certain aspects of a previously photographed scene. In one such work, “Monetishness: Family”, Mrs. Shatner draws inspiration from what Claude Monet might have done with his famous water lily scenes if he’d had access to today’s digital tools and been exposed to some modern influences.
The exhibit “Into the Light: An Exponential Art Experience” runs July 5-25 at the Gateway Arts Center in downtown Mt. Sterling. The Artist’s Reception with Elizabeth Shatner is 5pm-7pm on July 13th. Admission to the gallery is free.
