“The Key” by Paula Elliott

It’s mid-June, yet we here at the AACA already have our eye on the end of August.

With the ArtWorks Festival fast approaching, I’d like to once again show you around as many of our authors, artists, and musicians as we can before the weekend itself arrives. This, ladies and gents, is your introduction to the 2015 ArtWorks Festival.

The galleries will feature 65 visual artists from all across the United States. While in years past we’ve kept it closer to home, we wanted to widen our net this year. With that being said, our featured visual artist, who will show her work in the Turbine Gallery, is actually an Austin native.

Paula Elliott, who now lives and works in New York City, earned her MFA in Painting from Cornell University in 1975 after studying in places as varied as Wisconsin, Mexico, and London. The bulk of her solo and group exhibitions have taken place in the Northeast U.S; however, she’s also shown her work in far-reaching corners of the world: the Galeria De Arte Plastica Contemporanea in Guatemala (1996) and Nanjing College of Art Museum in Nanjing Chinga (1997) are two.

Elliott’s work resists description. Big is one word, although I should make clear that “big,” in this case, transcends the report of mere dimensions and could be applied to any number of her work’s characteristics, including color, shape, texture, etc. That the artist successfully and consistently creates vivid representations of light, shade, and dimension is maybe the most compelling characteristic to us as viewers. This August, as you’re strolling through the Turbine gallery, stop for just a moment and see if you can’t find another world, at once strange and familiar. It may even be one that you recognize.

See Elliott’s work at paulaelliott.net.