January 2011

Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC, Features Works by Pat Passlof

The work of the late painter Pat Passlof will be the focus of a joint exhibition of the Fine Art Museum at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC, and the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in Asheville, NC, on view from Jan. 26 through May 27, 2012. A reception will be held on Jan. 26, starting at 6pm.

Pat Passlof: Selections 1948-2011, will occupy space in the two venues simultaneously and will feature a selection of 50-60 paintings by Passlof, representing more than 60 years of her career. This long-planned retrospective is among the first since Passlof’s death from cancer in November at the age of 83. The artist helped select the work represented in the months before her death.

Art historians acknowledge Passlof as an under-recognized figure in the development of abstract expressionism. An alumna of Black Mountain College, she studied there during the summer institute of 1948, working closely with Willem de Kooning, Josef Albers, Buckminster Fuller, M.C. Richards and Merce Cunningham. Passlof was married to the late painter Milton Resnick. According to her obituary in The New York Times, Passlof’s “canvases are distinguished by the primacy of the brushstroke,” with the “deliberate, dense layering of paint” making it “hard for the viewer to tell what is figure and what is ground, and the constant, jockeying interplay between the two gives Ms. Passlof’s work much of its dynamism.”

On Jan. 26, the WCU Fine Art Museum is sponsoring a tour package for individuals in Haywood and Buncombe counties. Patrons can ride by bus from those counties to the WCU Fine Art Museum, enjoying an “art insider” program hosted by Denise Drury, interim director of the Fine Art Museum, and Alice Sebrell of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center.

The Fine Art Museum serves as a cultural catalyst to celebrate and preserve the artistic legacy of the western North Carolina region with a developing focus to collect, interpret and showcase innovation in contemporary art of high artistic merit. The Museum will present a full spectrum of creativity to reveal the underlying parallels and differences among wide-ranging forms of human expression in the visual and performing arts.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listing, call the Museum at 828/227-2553 or visit (http://www.wcu.edu/museum/).

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