The RAL Art Center Gallery Windows will have a split personality this month as we feature our window artist of the month and also the Gallery's "Snowmageddon" snowman competition. "Snowmageddon" is the RAL Art Center's challenge to their member artists to create a snowman, or woman, in the style of a famous artist. How would Picasso interpret a snowman? Or Van Gogh, or Monet? There is a collection of amazing sculptures of different snowmen featured in the Gallery Windows as well as inside around the Gallery. Among them you can spot Botticelli's, "The Birth of Venus", a snow-woman created by Dale Coburn, one of RAL's managers, and her family. This creative sculpture was inspired by Dale, with her husband engineering the structure, the arms and hand-carved facial parts; assembled by Dale and her daughters. There is also a wire and metal mobile of a snowman, created by Carol Vaughn, which she fashioned in the style of Alexander Calder, who is known for his original wire and metal sculptures that balance and move in space. And not unexpectedly, we have the COVID snowman, by Cate Kauffman, who is wearing his medical mask! The variety of these sculptures is surprising and sure to intrigue.
Barbara Kershner will be the featured artist in the other Gallery Window. An accomplished watercolorist, her style includes both realistic and impressionist elements, fine detail as well as loose brushwork. Barbara works almost exclusively from her own photographs, from which she takes and combines elements from several views of a subject to create a painting that expresses her own vision.
Barbara's display will include some snow scenes, in which she has included images from her camera, but also additions, to depict her grandchildren playing in the snow; her driveway through a snowy forest with the ever present deer looking on; a pine forest in a mountain snowstorm.
Barbara is a retired teacher and the current president of the RAL Art Center's Board of Directors. Although a life-long lover and dabbler in art, she began painting seriously when she joined the RAL Art Center in 2004. At first self-taught, she has since studied with excellent watercolor instructors through the many Art Center workshops. Barbara is a regular exhibitor in the Gallery, and over the years she has received numerous awards for her paintings.