Page 26 - the NOISE March 2015

26 • MARCH 2015 • the NOISE arts & news • thenoise.us
aRtsBRIEFS:
paint outside the lines
The mind, body and soul can be a hard triad to balance. For Cloe Premeaux this bal- ance, or sometimes, lack thereof, is where she discovers her incredibly spiritual and surreal artwork. Ms. Premeaux ponders, “How many people don’t sit down and meditate because they’re like, ‘I should be doing something?’” Instead of finding a place of stillness, the art- ist observes, at times others use this excuse. she examines, “You can’t do something if you don’t feel good, if you have anxiety or if you are getting sick all the time, and by sitting and going inward and being okay with all the things that come up — I think there’s just a lot of resolution, clarity and natural sponta- neity of creativity that comes from that.”
From what appears to be a tear in the cos- mos, a clock hangs down from a strand of sky. eyes reoccur in the different paintings of Ms. Premeaux, and the colors, details and symbols allow the viewer to contemplate the meaning within the painting. It is an artistic loss to find out some artists earlier paintings are gone forever, having been painted over when Ms. Premeaux was alight with an idea for a new painting and in need of a canvas.
Ms. Premeaux is a lifetime artist, who dab-
bled in a plethora of visual mediums from
drawing, oil pastel work, stickering and even
some tagging in high school. In 2009, with
no experience in painting besides watercolor,
she came to northern Arizona University to
major in painting. But the structure of univer-
sity art classes wasn’t conducive to her free-
flowing artistic style. “I don’t do a drawing,
and then paint inside the lines. It doesn’t work like that. It comes as it comes,” says Ms. Premeaux.
Painting isn’t always easy for the young artist, but even her hardest days are days she discovers her artwork more deeply. “I think it’s just creating — making a drawing, painting or sculpture — it’s going inward and peeling back all the layers of the onion, surrendering and letting yourself be inspired by whatever comes up, because some days you are way more on fire than others.” At other times she wonders, “why am I doing this? what’s the point? But if you weren’t creating and you were just walking around, I think you would still be asking yourself that same question, so I’d rather be in front of the canvas asking myself, ‘what’s the point.’”
This summer Ms. Premeaux has been invited to paint at a few music festivals. “I’m a little nervous about it, because I’m not going to be painting or drawing what I think people might be expecting. It’s weird painting in front of people, it’s just such a new concept to me because I’ve always done it alone. Painting is such a private, intimate thing.”
One aspect of the music festival scene that makes live painting an ex- perience different than painting alone, is the crowd interaction. “People love to come up to you, talk, ask questions and say how they feel,” Ms. Premeaux shares. “In a music festival setting with alcohol and drugs, as a sober artist, it’s just a little different. I’m trying to practice being detached about that.”
“I think art is life,” Ms. Premeaux says. “we shape and create our own in- dividual realities whether we’re aware of it or not, and I think it’s people’s responsibility to be aware of that and then integrate it because it’s a really cool and powerful gift. I think it does play a part in our happiness. People are going around asking, ‘why am I not happy?’ and they’re looking at all these reasons for why they’re not happy, but no one’s asking, ‘when did I stop dancing, creating or singing?’
The paintings of Cloe Premeaux are on display at Flagstaff Coffee Com- pany, 16 e Route 66, for the month of March, with an artist’s reception March 6, at 6PM. Flagbrew.com
ReCYCled aRtistRY
An early spring is upon Flagstaff, and it seems everywhere things are upcycling! which is why no other art show is more appropriate than the Artists’Coalition of Flagstaff’s 13th Annual Recycled Art Exhibition.
“The show emphasizes what you can do with recycled materials — things that people would normally just cast off, discard, throw away in the trash or materials that are just found — can be made into very clever, interesting and engaging artworks,” says Mike Frankel of the Artists’ Coali- tion of Flagstaff.
To participate, artwork must be made of at least 80% recycled materi- als. The show is accepting entries from residents of Coconino County, the native American reservations and for the first time ever — all of Yavapai County.