september brings another virtual opening for the gallery. four amazing exhibitions of new work by southern artists tony hernandez, rick beck, nate rogers and virginia scotchie. it is hard to describe our feelings this week while installing the shows. being around all the beauty and creativity of the artwork that has been made during this challenging time is so inspiring. the energy coming off the work uplifts your spirit and gives you hope for the future. we stand behind the decision to keep by appointment only for we have to keep the gallery a safe place to continue to be up and running. we are a small female run business and if one of us goes down the gallery will have to be closed. thank you to everyone including our incredible artists for understanding our position and for enlivening us everyday with your brilliance.
HIDELL BROOKS gallery is by appointment only. please call or email the gallery to make an appointment.
tony hernandez was born in Atlanta in 1964 and has been painting professionally since 1988. while he is a southern artist, his works are far from the region. his subject matter delves into the lives of children of the holocaust, as well as those who struggled through the great depression, especially in the ghettos of the bronx where his grandparents lived. he is haunted by photographs of these children, often being consumed by the images until he puts pigment to canvas. hernandez conveys the worlds that children create for themselves when they feel powerless by the fallacies of adults. with effervescence and symbolism, his paintings of preadolescent children wrestle with two themes: powerlessness and imagination. this tango creates a realm where the "mind of wonder" is tangible.
rick beck
recent cast glass sculptures
rick beck is a studio artist based in spruce pine, north carolina. he began working in glass at hastings college in nebraska, where he received his ba. he received an mfa from southern illinois university. in 1994, rick was awarded a visual arts fellowship by the north carolina arts council, followed by a national endowment for the arts regional visual arts fellowship from the southern arts federation in 1995. beck is part of the studio glass movement. he has taught at the prestigious pilchuck glass school, assisting artists curtiss brock and jan mares. he has taught at the penland school of craft since 1988. rick beck is known for his large-scale cast glass sculpture depicting industrial, everyday objects and the human figure.
nathaniel rogers was born in charlottesville, va in 1980. he attended davidson college where he received his ba in studio art and is a graduate of the hoffberger school of painting at the maryland institute college of art, where he received his mfa in painting. his work has been featured in new american paintings and received critical acclaim in journals and periodicals such as the washington post, washingtonian magazine, and the philadelphia city paper. his work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and his work can be found in both private and public collections throughout the united states. rogers currently lives and works in charlotte, nc.
"my paintings’ visual elements are inspired by personal experiences within the contexts of american suburban culture, global politics, and narrative symbology from historical mythology and oral tradition. the situations methodically staged in my pieces have components deliberately placed to add levity and humor, while a darker underbelly lurks. comedy is a masking mechanism, mimicking the ways in which we so often turn to distraction, denial, masquerade, or disbelief in order to cope with, or to temporarily avoid, the realities of life.
the smallness of the works emphasizes their physicality, drawing the viewer close. just as virtual and real identity can clash, there is a disjunction between the way my paintings seem virtually and the way they are in the physical world."
“As our interpersonal interactions increasingly give way to digital ones, our authentic selves are replaced with curated ones. We share a limited toolkit of shapes and symbols used to reduce our complex human experience to basic tropes. Grasping for connection, we assign emojis and other reductionist symbols to our states of mind, sent out unsolicited to our digital audience of friends and faux to interpret.”
virginia scotchie
recent ceramics
virginia scotchie is a ceramic artist and area head of ceramics at the university of south carolina in columbia, south carolina. she holds a bfa in ceramics from unc-chapel hill and in 1985 completed her master of fine arts at alfred university in new york. virginia exhibits her work extensively throughout the united states and abroad, and has received numerous awards including the sydney meyer fund International ceramics premiere award from the shepparton museum in victoria, australia. she has lectured internationally on her work and been an artist in residence in taiwan, italy, australia and the netherlands. her clay forms reside in many public and private collections and reviews about her work appear in prestigious ceramic publications.
“in my new work i continue to dive deeply into the relationship between three dimensional form and color. when making the work in my studio i think about the arrangement of the objects to one another.
the space that my work inhabits serves as a domain that is halfway between the concrete reality of the things i make and the meaning the objects acquire when they are embraced by the viewer.
color and the minimal beauty in simple forms serve as the touchstone for the new work.”
all available work by each artists can be viewed on our website under the artist page under each individual tab. click on the artist’s name to bring up all work with sizing and pricing. please call the gallery if you have any further questions.