I draw with pastels because they are tactile yet luminous. They flow, offer infinite depth, and are messy like life. There’s nothing between the color and myself as I apply, rub and scatter the pastel dust with my fingertips.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres said, “Drawing is the honesty of art”. In recent years I’ve laid aside long investigations of concepts with their special intellectual energy. My artist heart is still rooted in Duchamp. I’m so glad he existed and treasure the doors and peepholes he gave us. Yet now I sit in quiet places and move pastels around on sanded paper, my mind free. The pastels are an excuse to experience the grace of our earth and my love of nature is an excuse to experience the sensual pleasure of pastels.
These drawings are fragile since I cannot bear to apply a dulling fixative. They are double window matted, which creates space between the art and top matt behind which any slight shedding dust can disappear. Do not lay or store them upside down since the delicate dust would be more tempted to float off. As with everything in life, enjoy them while they last (probably a couple hundred years).
Reba is a retired Professor of Art at Kentucky State University who works in photography, drawing, mixed media, ceramics, and installation art.
After completing a BFA in Studio Arts at the University of Alabama in 1972, with concentrations in painting and sculpture, she earned an MFA from Syracuse University’s Experimental Studios in 1976, attending on a full-tuition scholarship and Graduate Teaching Assistantship stipend. This unique and selective program admitted six students each year who were given freedom to explore all media and access other discipline facilities across campus. She and an MFA colleague were awarded a Ford Foundation Grant to curate and coordinate an outdoor “response to site” group exhibition of installations by students and faculty from all disciplines titled “May Day”. The site was farmland on which had grown Onondaga County’s highest mountain, a solid waste landfill. Some community members may recall two subsequent art events in Henry and Owen Counties orchestrated with a group of like-minded Kentucky artists, May Day II and III.
When fellow Syracuse graduates applied to positions and moved on to city life Reba returned to her green Kentucky and forged a grounded career as an artist and educator. She enjoyed many Kentucky Arts Council grants throughout the state, including three unprecedented consecutive nine-month Artist-In-Residence positions at Western Elementary, Georgetown. Several of her residencies were with children at risk, such as Buckhorn Childrens’ Center, Cardinal Treatment Center for Youth at Risk, and a personal favorite VSA Arts Washington DC “Taking Notice Through the Lens” Project Grant, Wilkinson Street Alternative School. The documenting book is on display at Yes Arts.
In 2007 she was awarded the Kentucky Al Smith Fellowship, selected by out-of-state jurors based on artistic merit. As a member of the former Zephyr Gallery in Louisville she exhibited new bodies of work bi-annually, was represented in group exhibits, and participated in their Corporate Art Program which placed her work in several locations in Louisville and Chicago.
