The Feminine Mystique in Mid-Missouri
FAYETTE, Mo. – Three well-known Mid-Missouri women artists will be
featured in an exhibition that opens June 5 in the Ashby-Hodge Gallery
of American Art at Central Methodist College.
Titled "The Feminine Mystique in Mid-Missouri: the Art of Beth Darling,
Sharon Dyer and Susan Poirier," the exhibition will run through July 19.
Darling and Dyer both live in Boonville, and Poirier lives in Glasgow.
Also being featured in the exhibition are several new paintings,
including one by Cuban artist Miguel Angel Couret, recently acquired by
the Ashby-Hodge Gallery of American Art.
Darling works with oils and watercolors to create landscape and
still-life paintings, among other subjects. Dyer works with oils and
acrylics, often creating abstract works. Poirier is sculptor who works
with glass, bronze, aluminum, cement, fiberglass, wood, and resin.
A reception for the three artists will be held from 2-4:30 p.m., June
10, in the gallery. Gallery hours will be 1:30 – 4:30 p.m., Tuesdays,
Wednesdays and Thursdays. For additional information or to schedule
group showings, contact gallery curator Joe Geist at 660-248-6304 or
248-6324.
Darling, a native of Montreal, Canada, studied art at the Maryland Art
Institute, Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in
Boston, where she earned a Master of Arts four-year studio diploma. Her
oil painting "Plowboy Bend on the Missouri River" was selected as the
official poster for the 1999 Columbia Festival of the Arts. Much of her
art reflects the terrain of the American Southwest and aspects of its
cultural history. Among her paintings to be on display in the
Ashby-Hodge Gallery are works featuring landscapes and still-life scenes
in New Mexico, as well as paintings of Missouri River landscapes.
Dyer and her husband, Bob Dyer, an historian and folk musician also well
known in the mid-Missouri area, live in an historic house overlooking
the Missouri River at Boonville. She has taught art, art history and
literature in the Central Missouri area and worked as a graphic designer
at the University of Missouri. Her work has been exhibited at the
Rocheport Gallery, Legacy Books in Columbia, Stephens
Gallery at CMU and at the Hain House in Boonville as the featured artist
at the Missouri River Festival of Arts. Dyer works with both oils and
acrylics and likes "the mysterious, abstract qualities of combining
painting, drawing and collage papers with personal images while trying
to find a balance between the known and unknown."
Poirier, a native of Missouri, works with several different materials in
creating her pieces of sculpture. Photographs of her work have been
featured on the cover of two international magazines, and many of her
pieces of sculpture are in private collections of area residents as well
as those of well-known persons in Hollywood, Calif. She has been working
this spring on a new series of sculpture featuring the indigenous
peoples of various cultures.
