Contact:  Melissa Potter
July 21, 2006

Exhibit at MECC Features Artists from Virginia and Santa Catarina, Brazil

The Slemp Gallery at Mountain Empire Community College is hosting an international affair of sorts with the current exhibition of work, Bridging Cultures through the Arts.  The project was funded by the Department of State, and launched and completed by the Virginia Chapter of the Partners of the Americas, an organization of volunteers dedicated to promoting economic and social development throughout the western hemisphere.  According to the chapter’s website, the organization was founded in 1964, and now has 120 volunteer chapters linked in 60 partnerships involving the United States and Latin American and Caribbean nations.

The Virginia Chapter joined with the Partners of America chapter in Santa Catarina, Brazil to compile the work featured in Bridging Cultures through the Arts.  Each piece in the show was created by an artist who is either a resident of the Commonwealth of Virginia or the state of Santa Catarina.  Both amateur and professional artists are featured in the exhibit. 

“After visits to the Brazilian American Cultural Institute and the Brazilian Embassy in (Washington) D.C., I traveled to Brazil in April 2003,” says Penelope Moseley, the Virginia Chapter’s Committee Chairperson for Education and Culture.  “I received the first travel grant to visit Santa Catarina, and further pursue and develop this project.  The purpose is to build bridges of understanding and appreciation of cultural diversity and tradition through contemporary art, and to foster a global artistic community by means of a collaborative arts exchange.”

With the exhibit at MECC, Moseley and the participating artists from Virginia and Santa Catarina are extending this cultural “bridge” to the southwestern portion of the state.  One Brazilian artist with work featured in the show is Marilene Casagrande, whose art form uses natural pigments including vegetal, mineral, and animal.  She has participated in an artist exchange program as part of the Bridging Cultures through the Arts project, holding workshops and demonstrating her art across the Commonwealth. 

Hampton, Virginia artist Steve Prince will also take part in the artist exchange program by traveling to Santa Catarina in 2007 to lecture, demonstrate, and hold workshops in his fields of printmaking and sculpture.  His work is currently featured at MECC, as well.

The exhibit will be on display until August 30.  The Slemp Gallery is located in the Wampler Library of Robb Hall. Hours are 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Monday through Thursday, and 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Friday.  For more information about the Partners of the Americas organization, visit the website at www.partners.net.

“Still Broken” by Hampton, Virginia artist Steve Prince is one of the pieces featured in Bridging Cultures through the Arts, an exhibition of art work currently on display in the Slemp Gallery at MECC.
 

“Village of Stars” by Santa Catarina artist Vera Lucia Soares Sachet is currently on display in the Slemp Gallery at MECC.  The work is part of the exhibit, Bridging Cultures through the Arts.

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