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6 Decades of Painting & Sculpture by Katherine-Tinker-McCauley

Presented by Broward County Library

May 4-June 22, 2011

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Gallery Six Highlights 6 Decades of Painting & Sculpture by Katherine-Tinker-McCauley

 

Opening Reception Wednesday, May 11, 5:30 - 7:30 pm

 

BROWARD COUNTY, Fla. - During the months of May and June, Gallery Six, in Ft. Lauderdale's Main Library, 100 South Andrews Avenue, presents work from the 60 year career of artist Katherine Helmers - i.e. Tinker- McCauley. Critics have called her work, "earthy, mysterious, and powerful".

The exhibition, a retrospective titled "Katherine Helmers McCauley / Offerings: 1968 - 2010", opens May 4th and runs through June 22, 2011. McCauley, who passed away last fall, was a pioneer in the Ft. Lauderdale art scene. She moved to Ft. Lauderdale in 1950, and spent the next sixty years nurturing the arts. When the city had no regular museum, she taught art to children in a small storefront downtown. She didn't stop at the storefront. With the help of civic groups like the Junior League, she helped found the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art, Art Amaze, 2 Plus 3: the Artists' Organization, and the Third Avenue Artists' group. She was also a member of the National Association of Women Artists and a participant in more than 60 group shows , with 6 one-person exhibitions in her lifetime.

McCauley pioneered in her own artwork as well. Throughout six decades of creative activity, she experimented with media and technique. She slashed canvas in the 60s, poured resin in the 70s, burnished metal in the 90s, and used a propane blowtorch to burn her works in the 2000s. After she turned 80, she began some new approaches: smashing car windows, setting off fireworks, and exploding gunpowder.

But McCauley's art was driven by ideas rather than trends. Like an archaeologist, she dug for identity. Her pieces reflect strong religious conviction and meditate on spirituality. She traced out her own quest for the Spirit by exploring two key topics: nature and ancient writing. These topics appear again and again in her work, as in Sanctum, where she projects a growing tree branch out of a burned-bronze base, or in Paleo Prayer, a construction of recycled aviary wood scratched with ancient letters spelling out Aaron's blessing from the book of Numbers.

McCauley strove to see the holiness in human growth. Her inspiration came from the growth of Fort Lauderdale, the growth of a person, the growth of a tree. She summed it up when she etched a poem, composed by her sister, into the front of a small sculpture: