Summit One Gallery Features Works by Rosemary Clark Stiefel
Summit One Gallery in Highlands, NC, will open Icons of Nature featuring works by renowned artist, Rosemary Clark Stiefel from July 27 through Aug. 28, 2002. "Icons" meaning a symbolic representation and "nature" as in all that surrounds her in the mountains of North Carolina.
Stiefel's new works combines an Eastern art perspective with medieval and renaissance Western art and sacred geometric shapes for the composition of subject matter derived from nature. This body of work began last year in Werden, Germany when Stiefel was there getting to know a new grandchild. She would take the baby along with her on a "sketch walk". This is a habit a former art instructor taught her. "A sketch walk", Stiefel says, "develops the sense of seeing. It is a mental recording of how a memory of an image, of seeing an image, can be put onto canvas." These new works are her memories of the mountains, woods, fiddle head ferns, hemlocks, lichen, laurel branches and other well known botanicals that surround her home in Highlands NC.
In addition to her well-known watercolors and large-scale acrylic paintings Stiefel has become equally productive in one-of-a-kind designs. Her clients are both private and corporate. Her designs range from a needlepoint rug for Sharian Inc. in Atlanta to a silk scarf produced by Echo Designs in NYC for the Atlanta Botanical Gardens, to china for the Southern Living Home of the Year at Clemson University Botanical Gardens for designer and author, Ryan Gainey.
Her latest design project was done especially to benefit the Bascom-Louise Gallery (Highlands) Art and Wine Auction to be held at the gallery as a gala fundraising event June 28 & 29. For past auctions Stiefel has donated paintings, but this year she donated one of her sketches from Icons of Nature and her time to oversee a 'just for Highlands', one-of-a-kind wool rug (9x12) made in Katmandu,Nepal. The earth colors and patterns reflect the artist's visual impressions from her "sketch walks".
Stiefel is an advocate for the arts as well as an artist. She has been a chairperson for the Georgia Council of the Arts; served on a Congressional Citizens AdvisoryCommittee on the Arts, 4th District; served on the Georgia Panel of Information on the Arts, the Arts Festival of Atlanta (1971-1981); served as aboard member for the Southern Arts Federation, Stetson University School of Music, Studio for the Arts (Highlands), the Atlanta Boy Choir, the DeKalbCouncil for the Arts, and the Bascom-Louise Gallery (Highlands).