First, Last & Always...

Join us First Thursday September 1st from 5-8pm at the Fayetteville Underground for another exciting month of all new exhibitions! Linda Sheets' scratch board works will be shown in the Revolver gallery. This will be Linda's first solo exhibition at the Underground since joining us as a studio artist. Linda is a transplant from Texas, and her "Dog and Monkey" show is sure to be a hit. Megan Chapman will present her latest series of abstract paintings, "Sometimes I love you and other stories," in the Vault gallery. The colorful contemporary paintings of U.K. visiting artist, Steven Heaton will be featured in the Hive gallery while Martha Molina's raku pottery will be in the E Street.

Steven Heaton
The World Without Us

My work is inspired by nature and the interaction of the mechanical and the man made element upon the landscape. Within my paintings, texture and surface is explored by using a variety of materials from traditional oil, and acrylic paint to the heavily layered and corroded use of metal and wire.
My work presents an alternative view of this natural and chemical landscape as the lines of communication begin to blur, factories rust against an autumnal background & nature begins to creep into dominance where regular human use declines.
Time continues to pass in a world without us.

Linda Sheets
Dog And Monkey Show

I believe life is mostly just a series of activities and events. We spend a lot of our time pursuing some and avoiding others. The first main event, of course, is our birth; the last, our death. My goal is to squeeze as many pleasurable activities and fun events in between those two uncontrollable major events. Making monkeys, dogs and other art objects enables me to share just a bit of the absolute delight that I feel about this whole adventure of life. The secret is to not take myself or my art too seriously. There are many dark events and activities that I have experienced and even participated in, it's hard to avoid them. …knowing this, I prefer to chase the lightness, the joy, the bliss, however fleeting and elusive, for as long as I can.

Martha Molina
Feu d'artifice

Martha Molina grew up in Clay County in Northeast Arkansas influenced and encouraged to embrace her great grandmother's Native American culture. She actively practiced various crafts and loved the materials that were found in nature and from an early age she hand built animals and vessels from clay. Martha received her B.A. and M.ED. from Southeastern Louisiana University where she discovered the process for life masks and began making performance masks for costumes and storytelling as well as decorations such as three dimensional portraits through experimentation. Martha returned to Arkansas in 1993 and has been active in the arts community every since living and working in Fayetteville. She has worked as a multi-disciplined on the Arkansas Arts Council AIE Artist Roster and has conducted artist residencies throughout the state in theatre, mask-making, watercolor, and clay. She currently teaches art at St. Joseph School in Fayetteville.
Martha Molina's recent works are mostly nonfunctional pottery choosing alternative firing techniques which give the most unpredictable results. The process of Raku firing intrigues and excites Martha the most as she watches the translucent glow of the work as she pulls it from a 1900 degree kiln. The rapid reduction, cooling and trailing made by the flames creates a final product that cannot be reproduced.
"The process of alternative firing is like an amazing Christmas morning every time I open the kiln!"


Megan Chapman
Sometimes I love you and other stories

Megan Chapman's latest series of paintings, Sometimes I love you and other stories, will be shown at the Fayetteville Underground during the month of September in the Vault Gallery. These monochromatic works are fused with words typed on paper torn from old books and give the viewer the sense of reading pages out of a diary or letters to a distant lover. Very minimal in nature, the work explores the artist's love of the graphite line, as it cuts through the brilliantly white-painted canvas.
The series reflects on the kind of love that catches one unexpectedly, the kind we always knew was somewhere on the planet yet was for others. At the same time that this love seems special or unique, it is also ordinary and known. It is both new and old and never simple or easy, yet somehow it fills the gaps within, making the core of the person it touches stronger.
Sometimes I love you and other stories represents the absence of fear and the challenges to our beliefs about ourselves and the world outside upon finding another soul that we can sometimes love.
Megan Chapman was born in Fayetteville, Arkansas. She received her B.F.A. in painting from the University of Oregon. She has shown her work over the past fifteen years in Arkansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Washington State, Washington D.C., Philadelphia PA, and recently in Liverpool, England. Megan's work has appeared in various publications and is held in numerous private collections both nationally and internationally.