current show
FAYETTE, Mo. – The works of two accomplished Mid-Missouri women
artists will be featured in a new exhibition titled “The Feminine
Mystique in Mid-Missouri, Part Two” opening March 25 at The Ashby-Hodge
Gallery of American Art at Central Methodist University in Fayette.
Artists Claudia Graham, who lives near Fayette, and Linda Hoover, from
the Sedalia area, will be present for a reception in their honor at the
gallery from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday, March 30.
The exhibition will run through May 11. Gallery hours will be from 1:30
to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday. For more
information or to arrange tours, contact Dr. Joe Geist at 660-248-6304
(office), or 248-6324 (Gallery), or by e-mail at
jegeist@centralmethodist.edu. The gallery is physically impaired
accessible.
Also being shown during the exhibition are three original paintings and
a number of lithographs by Thomas Hart Benton from the gallery’s
permanent collection.
Graham, a native of Pennsylvania, began experimenting with various craft
media in the early 1990s. She attended Mendocino (Calif.) College, where
she studied painting and sculpture. One of her first exhibitions
included 45 of her paintings in a one-person show titled “Spontaneous
Humor” at the Ukiah (Calif.) Players Theater.
Other exhibitions in California displaying her unique style and sense of
humor included “Mendocino Humor from Light to Dark,” “The Absurd Silly
and Unexpected” and “All Things Organic.” Many of her works are included
in collections throughout the United States.
Beginning in the early 1980s, Graham and her husband, Henry Graham, who
is an adjunct professor of art at CMU, began traveling extensively
throughout the world, including two Atlantic Ocean crossings and trips
through the Caribbean and the Bahamas in their 33-foot sailboat named “Lionheart.”
“The people and humor in my life, images from years of travel abroad in
a sailboat with my family, as well as my dreams and imagination,” Graham
says in an artist’s statement, “are the inspirations for my work.”
Graham’s
work in the present exhibition includes her humorous oil on hardboard
painting of a waitress serving wine. It is titled “Now, Waddya Want?”
Graham says that, in addition to art, her interests include designing
and decorating houses she and her husband have built, politics, local
history, gardening and Mediterranean cooking.
Hoover, who works in the watercolor medium, earned her bachelor’s degree
in art education from the University of Central Missouri and her
master’s degree in education with an emphasis in art from the University
of Missouri-Columbia. She currently teaches art at an elementary school
three days a week and spends the rest of the week working in her art
studio or at locations where she is working on murals, caricatures or
portraits.
She recently accepted the position of superintendent of the Fine Art
Department at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, which includes the
development of a student division in art. Hoover shows and sells her art
regularly. She has had her work admitted to numerous juried shows
locally and nationally and has received numerous prizes and awards,
including her most recent achievement – winning a competition for the
cover of “Watercolor Magic,” the quarterly magazine of the Missouri
Watercolor Society.
Hoover says that her delight in working with watercolors was inherited
from her mother. She says it frequently leads her to produce work that
is often lighthearted, emphasizes the transparent brilliance of the
medium and her own appreciation of color harmonies and joyous themes.
