A Triple Treat - Baylor, Graham, & Bloch
FAYETTE, Mo. – A new exhibition featuring the works of three artists
will open Oct. 29 in The Ashby-Hodge Gallery of American Art at Central
Methodist University.
Titled “A Triple Treat,” the exhibition features the works of Fayette
native Lisa Baylor, long-time resident Dale Graham and the late Dr.
Maurice Bloch. The exhibition, which will run through Dec. 14, marks the
13th anniversary of The Ashby-Hodge Gallery of American Art.
Baylor, who graduated from Fayette High School in 2001, earned a
bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Webster University. Her present
works include paintings done in combinations of mixed media. “By using
paint along with other mediums and textures such as nail polish, paper
and fabric,” she said, “I am hoping to produce a mixed media ‘painting’
that has a more playful look and feel.”
Baylor said that although the use of text has dominated her recent
paintings, she is currently using “Hearts and Thoughts” as a jumping-off
point to a new series of more figurative, autobiographical works.
Graham, who for many years operated a pharmacy in Fayette and is
well-known for his professional photography, also is a gifted artisan
who creates wood carvings. On display is a series of hand-crafted wood
bowls that Graham has created. Graham’s black and white landscape photos
(he studied photography under Ansel Adams) and his bowl art have been
featured in the gallery previously.
The third display in the exhibition consists of five pen and ink
drawings of famous personalities by the late E. Maurice Bloch,
better-known as the definitive biographer of George Caleb Bingham.
Bloch, a professor of art history at the University of California for
many years, also was a gifted artist. Over a period of 30 years, he
created 166 pen and ink drawings of the heads of the celebrated and
famed personalities of our time. Bloch would make double copies of each
sketch, ask the person who had been sketched to sign the drawing, give
one copy to them and keep the other.
Among the personalities he sketched are Albert Einstein, Frank Lloyd
Wright, Igor Stravinsky, Gen. Douglas MacArthur and Harry Truman, to
name a few. Truman, Carl Sandberg and others are among the five drawings
that will be on display at The Ashby-Hodge Gallery. They are being
loaned to the gallery by retired physician Robert Doroghazi of Columbia.
Also being displayed in the gallery annex during the “Triple Treat”
exhibition is a High Renaissance-Mannerist-period painting of the
martyred Saint Sebastian by a prolific painter who dominated the art
scene of early 16th-century Siena, Giovanni Antonio Bazzi. It was a
recent gift to the gallery.
