You’re going to get a warm reception at the gallery opening next Thursday at the Blount-Bridgers House.

Titled, “Out of the Doldrums,” The new exhibition is “full of great color and warmth,” said Edgecombe County Cultural Arts Council Executive Director Buddy Hooks who began hanging the show Wednesday with the help of his gallery committee.

“It’s an exhibit that’ll recharge our visitors for the coming season,” Hooks said. “Invitations are in the mail to our patrons, and we hope that many more in the community will want to join us for this opening.”

The exhibition features five area artists, in a mix of traditional and contemporary and the gallery committee chose to invite these artists together, because their work seemed so compatible.

Three painters who have been part of the annual art bazaar in the past, include Rocky Mount artist Jan Sullivan-Volz, a realist in her style of painting rural landscapes of North Carolina; and two Roanoke Rapids artists, Christina Gregory who mixes her love of creating with the art of story-telling; and Susan Watson’s canvases speak from her heart and soul, inspired by her faith.

wo potters, husband and wife, from Wilson, Kathi and Dan Blackmon, bring the mix down to earth with various sizes and shapes and textures in the pottery they make. The Blackmons are new to the gallery.

Watson was an art educator and taught in the Roanoke Rapids Grade schools for over 20 years. She was recently featured in an exhibit at the Mims Gallery on the campus at North Carolina Wesleyan College, and has participated in juried exhibitions in many parts of the state and in Virginia. Her contemporary style shows no hesitation in her piercing color, the repetition of shapes and unexpected overpainting which help her to manipulate reality and create passion in her paintings. Each composition has drama, an abstract expression of her faith, revealing religious symbolism as they relate to her faith and the basic elements of life.

Gregory calls herself a folk artist, but she is also well-known for her excellence in faux finishing, having been artist-in-residence at the N.C. Governor’s Mansion in the early 1990s. Articles on her work have appeared in numerous national magazines. She exhibited work in the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City and has either exhibited, demonstrated or led a workshop in a great number of museums and galleries in North Carolina, Virginia and in Georgia.

“What you’ll see in her work in the gallery here, are examples of two mediums that she excels in, painting and scissor-cut paper (scherenschnitte),” said Hooks. "On canvas, she experiments with color, texture and content. In both, she retells children’s stories, “recording and recreating childhood memories through humor and whimsy,” she explains. The end results of brightly painted canvas or scraps of cut and colored paper fancies reflect an intersection of her interests and gifts. You’ll quickly recognize her new interest in her paintings that illustrate children’s stories, fables and fairy tales. She insists, “Imagination is essential.”

Rocky Mount artist, Sullivan-Volz, says she is moved visually by her own community, from the hills near Castalia to the expansive fields of the coastal plains, and paints the well-loved landscapes of Eastern North Carolina, a part of the state where she says, “There seems to be a special light.”

Her landscapes almost explode with the way she captures the sky above and the mountains, the waters and fields beyond, and you can tell she enjoys every minute spent outdoors. Her selections for this exhibit introduce a new series of paintings in which the viewer is inside, looking out. “These paintings, although realistic, hold symbolic meaning for me that I hope will be discovered by the viewer,” she explained.

Volz who was a teacher for 30 years, began exhibiting her work in the late 70s and quickly won recognition and awards in many of the juried exhibitions she has entered throughout eastern North Carolina and in Virginia. A regular at Edgecombe’s Great Tarboro Art Bazaar, her recent exhibits include the Gateway Technology Center in Rocky Mount, the Halifax County Arts Council in Roanoke Rapids, the Visual Art Exchange Gallery in Raleigh, the National Juried Art Exhibition in Rocky Mount, Pocosin Arts in Columbia, the Mims Gallery; she was accepted in the 2009 N.C. Juried Fine Artists Exhibition in Raleigh where she won first place in 3-D division, was recipient of the Best Rocky Mount Artist award in 2009. The list doesn’t end.

The Blackmons have lived in Wilson for over 25 years. Both graduates of Barton or when it was called Atlantic Christian College, they discovered the experience of working with clay at a pottery class offered at the local community college. Dan took to throwing pots and making bowls while wife, Kathi preferred hand-building her pieces. For years they had been collecting pottery mostly from the Seagrove are and from the Dan Finch open house each year, that they had gone full circle from collecting to creating, soon becoming members of the Dan Finch Studio in the rural town of Bailey and began soaking in the experience of the seasoned potters there.

They each began to develop their own individual styles and design techniques out of the many workshops that took place in Finch’s studio.

“Most of our work is functional, some is more decorative while other pieces can be used everyday,” Dan explained. “We use lead-free glazes on all of our work, the colors, shapes and carvings of our pieces are what we consider our specialty.”

The Blackmons have exhibited at Barton College Galleries, the Wayne County Arts Council in Goldsboro, the N.C. Pottery Center in Seagrove and participated in the 2009 Wilson County Art Walk. They continue to participate in a number of workshops.

The exhibit will be ready for view this weekend. The gallery is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. and on Sundays rom 2 until 4 p.m.

The works are for sale, which is how the gallery remains sustainable, Hooks said.