By MARTA HEPLER DRAHOS, mdrahos@record-eagle.com
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TRAVERSE CITY — Art and music go hand-in-hand for Carol C. Spaulding.
The Maple City painter and cellist is among seven core artists in Seed Studio Gallery's new Song in Art exhibition.
The show opened June 21 and runs through July 20 at Good Work Collective on Union Street. It showcases art on the subject of music, from Acme artist Royce Deans' abstracts to Spaulding's still life florals with music-theme titles.
"I'm a musician so I do tend to use those kinds of titles," said Spaulding, whose "Chorus of Pinks," "Syncopation" and "A Capriccio" are among dozens of works in the show. "I do listen to music when I'm working in my studio, and music is a big part of my life."
Spaulding's "quiet" works in gouache, a water-based medium with more opaqueness than watercolor, are a counterpoint to Deans' bold acrylics on wood.
Deans' works, hung alongside those of friend and collaborator Tali Farchi, of the Netherlands. are part of the pair's ongoing improvisational project.
"We paint live music," said Deans, who met Farchi five years ago on deviantART, an online community that showcases user-made artwork. "We put our studio somewhere in the world and then invite local musicians to play as our subjects."
The pair's Song in Art works represent a six-week stint in Chicago called COLORboration Project Loop. Together the artists set up a studio and stage in a former Wabash Avenue storefront and painted the live music of 35 bands.
"Every piece has a texture, a rhythm," Deans said.
Many of the show's works were generated during Seed Studio Gallery's monthly Sketch Live Music events, said gallery owner Lindy Bishop. They include Durk Brown's mixed media, acrylic and oil paint stick "Halleluiah Nickles and Dimes" series featuring a pork-pie-hatted "Harmonica Man," and Lisa Perrine Brown's charcoal sketches "Guitar Man," "Harmonica Blues" and "Blue Duet."
Durk Brown is a former Traverse City resident now living in Memphis whose musical figures are influenced by pop culture and the expressionist and post-modern movements. Perrine Brown, of Traverse City, is a former car, toy and housewares designer now working with vintage and recycled fabrics and other materials.
As their name implies, the Sketch Live Music events — usually the third Tuesday of the month — feature live music with musicians doubling as models for area artists.
"The idea was that it would be a night where people would observe and buy things out of people's sketchbooks," said Bishop, who has hosted the events for about two years, first in Elk Rapids and now in Traverse City.
Song in Art is one of an ongoing series of theme exhibitions at the gallery that also includes Genre, Characters, Script, July 27-Aug. 24; Hearth, Aug. 31-Oct. 5; Plate, Oct. 12-Nov. 27; and The Beeholder, Dec. 7-Jan. 11, 2013.
Regular gallery hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. For more information, visit www.seedstudiogallery.com.
