What do an anthropologist and an interior designer have in common? They are both featured artists for the month of March at Artworks Around Town in Wheeling.
The Gallery Hop and opening at Artworks for Deborah Herndon (anthropologist) and Jerre Watkins (interior designer) will be held at Artworks' gallery in the Centre Market from 5:30-8 p.m. Friday, March 1. It will be an opportunity to meet the guest artists, view and discuss their creations with them. Artwork artists also will be present. Light refreshments will be provided.
In the North Gallery, artwork created in therapy sessions at the Sexual Assault Help Center in Wheeling will be shown. The artists of this agency are once again showing their original and expressive artwork. "Last year's exhibit impressed the soul as well as the eye," an Artworks spokewoman said.
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Art featured in the March exhibition at Artworks Around Town in Wheeling, include “Arched Tunnel, Lyon,” above, and “Rusty Cross, Cornelia de Confent.” The guest artists are Jerre Watkins and Deborah Herndon.
Watkins, who started out with a Bachelor of Science degree in interior design from Oklahoma State University, now teaches watercolor workshops at Cedar Lakes in Ripley. This fourth-generation artist is a creative woman whose first love is watercolor, but through her artistic ambition and dedication has, with vast study and work, expanded her work into many mixed media.
Studies in art have taken Watkins from Louisiana Tech University and the Ringling School of Art summer programs and eventually leading to a Master of Arts degree from Marshall University in fine arts and painting.
From abstract to realism, Watkins blends her design training with a variety of technique and creative expression. Participation in a long list of exhibits and juried shows, she won the best of show award in the 2011 West Virginia Watercolor Society exhibit. Her work is collected in many corporate and private collections in West Virginia and surrounding states. She has served almost every position in the Allied Artists of West Virginia.
Herndon's original photographs of old architecture details and artifacts are easily attributed to her early training as an anthropologist. These "Riveting Images" are printed in an unusual process with commercial-grade metallic paper which creates saturated light and a reflected light, three-dimensional effect. The limited editions of photographic prints are framed in the best archival methods with copyright and trademark protection.
This creative photographer with a master's degree in urban planning, a doctorate in mineral economics and a Juris Doctor degree from St. Louis University School of Law is the ultimate example of what love of artistic expression can provide for the soul of the artist. Her interests and experiences have provided the background which spurs her desire to preserve by photography the details of cultures that are too often lost in conflicts of cultures over the span of history.
An energetic photographer, Herndon has participated in 32 juried competitions in the past two years and has won eight awards including first place in the "You Are Here" Regional Juried Exhibit at the Parkersburg Art Center. Her work has been shown in West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky in the past two years.
