VOICE LESSONS | ELI CORBIN, FRAN GARDNER, LISA STROUD AND BEAU WILD

January 19 – April 11, 2020
opening reception Sunday, January 19, 2020 | 1 – 3 pm | free for members/$20 for non-members

Lisa Stroud, Fran Gardner, Beau Wild + Eli Corbin | photo by Shana Dry

Focusing on issues women have dealt with for centuries, Voice Lessons is a multi-media visual-arts narrative of women’s lives — the strength, tenacity and courage demonstrated by our mothers, sisters, daughters and friends. Shifting the dialogue toward empowerment, the art of four female artists, Eli Corbin (Asheville, NC), Fran Gardner (Heath Springs, SC), Lisa Stroud (Cary, NC) and Beau Wild (Port Orange, FL), illustrates the multi-dimensional reality of womanhood — as intelligent and sexual and as powerful and feminine, with emotional range. Voice Lessons encourages tolerance, empathy and compassion among women and men, as it draws together the struggle, strength, vulnerability, individuality and community of the female experience.

Eli Corbin incorporates pattern and symbolism to evoke the strength and power available to women through connection with community, nature, spirituality and belief in self.

Fran Gardner combines oil painting with stitchery, traditionally a female art form, to spotlight the voices of women in the slippery cultural and political landscape.

Lisa Stroud tells her stories of feminine empowerment on canvas, using “the little black dress” as her bantering, sometimes whimsical, narrator.

Beau Wild uses the concept of masking to explore the degree to which women reveal or obscure themselves as they navigate the world.