Artist creates works using fire and heat

Stacy Lynn Waddell is up to her elbows in dishwater when she answers the phone at her mother's North Carolina home.

But this bit of inconvenience doesn't keep the Chapel Hill artist from explaining the title of her solo exhibit, 'The Evidence of Things Unseen,' on view at the Gibbes Museum of Art through Dec. 5.

'The Bible can provide amazing inspiration for an artist,' says Waddell, promptly reading from the 11th chapter of Hebrews: ' ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.' '

She will present a more extensive explanation of her artwork, which she creates through fire and heat, at 6 p.m. Wednesday as part of the Women in Art Lecture Series sponsored by the Gibbes and the Center for Women.

Runner-up for the 2008 Factor Prize established to honor a Southern artist, Waddell met Gibbes Executive Director Angela Mack in 2007 when Mack was visiting the University of North Carolina's art department, where Waddell was completing her MFA.

Waddell was invited by the Gibbes to exhibit here.

'I always knew I wanted to be a painter, but I just never became fully engaged in oil or watercolor,' says the artist, who then found another avenue to express her artistic endeavors.

When working as a camp counselor during college, she became intrigued with the use of a branding iron to produce drawings on paper and canvas in a crafts class.

'I discovered I really love using heat to create an image,' she says. 'You actually use your entire body when you light up a propane torch and other heated tools.'

The centerpiece of 'The Evidence of Things Unseen' is a multipaneled work consisting of 60 smaller pieces she formed with a branding iron.

Also in the Women in Art Lecture Series is Jennifer Krieger, an art history graduate from Vassar College, whose lecture is titled 'Remember the Ladies: Women of the Hudson River School.' She will appear at 6 p.m. Nov. 17.

A resident of New York, Krieger is managing partner of Hawthorne Fine Art LLC at 74 East 79th St.

'This means I travel around the country looking at private collections of paintings dating from 1820 to 1920 that we may wish to purchase for our gallery,' Krieger explains in a phone interview from New York.

The art historian has become nationally known for her articles written on American paintings and especially on 19th-century American women artists. She served as co-curator of the 2010 exhibition 'Remember the Ladies' at the Thomas Cole House National Historic Site in the Catskills in New York, which is the first exhibition to be solely dedicated to the work of female Hudson River School artists.

Krieger defines the school's painters as 'artists who in the 1820s painted around the Hudson River and decided to document landscapes such as New Hampshire's White Mountains and the Rocky Mountains.'

'Many of the women were interested in hiking and painting plein air,' says Krieger. 'This also gave them some independence.'

Admission for both lectures, followed by a reception, is $10 for Gibbes and Center for Women members, $20 for nonmembers. Tickets may be purchased by calling 722-2706, ext. 22.

‘The Beggar's Opera'

'At the time Vaclav Havel, the former Czech Republic president, was writing ‘The Beggar's Opera' in 1975, he was being spied on, harassed and even jailed by the Communists in power in Czechoslovakia,' says College of Charleston theater professor Mark Landis, director of the production opening Thursday at the college.

Although the satire borrows aspects of John Gay's 1728 ballad opera, Landis wants it made clear the show is not an opera.

'Havel's prior quirky, avant- garde satires such as ‘The Memorandum' had established him as a major dramatist,' explains Lan-dis. 'But Havel was also a leading voice for human rights in Czechoslovakia, where the Communist government used extortion and worse to suppress voices of dissent.'

Although tackling an essentially serious subject, Havel used comic absurdities, twisted logic and bizarre events to satirize those who ignore values such as honesty and personal integrity. Sadly, in 1976 it ran for a single night before being declared illegal.

Most recently, the show was staged in 2005 in New York by the Invisible City Theatre Company.

The 32-member cast for the college's production includes Anna Stephenson, Storm Smith, Laine Hester and Ria Nochera.

Performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and Nov. 15-16 with a 3 p.m. matinee Nov. 14 at the Robinson Theatre in the Simons Center for the Arts.

Tickets are $15 general public, and $10 College of Charleston students, faculty, staff and senior citizens 60 and older; to purchase, call 953-5604 or at the door.

Reach Dottie Ashley at dottieashley@gmail.com.