The Oregon Coast Council for the Arts welcomes Corvallis-based artist Anna Fidler from April 10 to May 29 in the Upstairs Gallery at the Newport Visual Arts Center. Fidler’s exhibition, “Incessant Pulse of the Future,” will include large-scale geometric works on paper. The new exhibit is being presented in conjunction with the Charles A. Hartman Fine Art gallery in Portland.
Following COVID-19 guidelines, the Upstairs Gallery at the VAC is currently open on Wednesdays and Saturdays, noon to 4pm. Other online interviews and events are being scheduled to accompany the live exhibition.
The “Incessant Pulse of the Future” will feature pieces from Anna Fidler’s most recent series, “Quit the Night, Seek the Day,” a new direction for the accomplished artist.
“My paintings have become bold, geometric and opaque,” Fidler says. “These non-objective works are painted spells—incantations that describe feelings such as anxiousness, euphoria and yearning. To resist objectification, I have abandoned traditional modes of seeing and encourage my viewers to do so as well. My new works abandon the human form in favor of representing energy itself.”
Fidler’s works are made with flashe–a water-soluble vinyl paint–gouache and ink on sheets of handmade grid paper. Cut-out stencils, invented symbols penned in ink, and flat matte repeated and mirrored forms work together to create the sense of energy that the artist describes.
Fidler received her MFA from Portland State University in 2005 and her BFA from Western Michigan University in 1995. Since 2015, she has been a full-time core studio instructor (drawing and painting) and the JumpstART pre-college program coordinator at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Previously she taught design and painting at the Oregon College of Art and Craft. She has had solo exhibitions at The Boise Art Museum, APEX at The Portland Art Museum, Johansson Project in Oakland, and Wieden & Kennedy and Disjecta in Portland. Fidler has shown her work at other venues such as The Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science and Art at The University of Southern California, and The Tacoma Art Museum, among other locations. In 2020, she was commissioned to create a work for “Metamorphosis: Visualizing the Music of Paul Hindemith,” at The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene.
To join the Friends of the VAC eNews list and learn more about related events, visit https://coastarts.org/visual-arts-center/newsletter/
The Newport Visual Arts Center adheres to all health and safety protocol provided by the Governor’s Office as well as the City of Newport. All visitors to the VAC are required to wear proper masks and have their temperature taken prior to entry.
The Oregon Coast Council for the Arts manages the Newport Visual Arts Center and the Newport Performing Arts Center, and serves as the regional arts council for Oregon’s seven coastal counties.