Friends of the Library 50th Art Fair's featured artist Carolyn Gravatte, photo courtesy of SMFoL
Press release posted 4/2/12 – Alison Snow, chair of the 50th annual Friends of the Sierra Madre Library Art Fair is excited to announce that the Fair’s featured artist is Carolyn Grantham Gravatte, a long-time resident and painter of Sierra Madre. Carolyn studied at Otis Art Institute and received early training with master Fine Art painter Theo Heep of Germany and Sculpture Instructor Elizabeth Johnson of Monrovia. An accredited teacher of Sculpture, Drawing and Painting, Gravatte taught Portrait and Figure Sculpture and Oil Painting for many years, establishing the Monrovia Sculpture Workshop. She has been an artist for over fifty years.
After Carolyn quit teaching sculpting classes that required heavy lifting loading and unloading kilns, her husband encouraged her to go back to painting just for fun, just for the love of it. She painted neighbors houses, our mountains and Eaton Canyon. “I thoroughly knew the classic way of painting”, she said,” but wanted to paint more impressionistically, more spontaneously, more passionately, if you will. One year I found the perfect teacher at our very own Art Fair and I do use some of those techniques to this day.”
Gravatte has been painting a series of canvases featuring ‘site specific’ scenes around and about Sierra Madre. The first in the Sierra Madre series was “The Old North Church” painted in 2004. Using oils she paints in a Contemporary Traditional style with a touch of Impressionism – making pencil sketches, studies and painting on site – with the exception of huge canvases which are painted in the studio. She has painted a canvas for The Friends for the Art Fair. The site was chosen, with much thought, by the Art Committee as a treasured view of our town and our mountain Jones Peak. Entitled “It’s A Good Life”, the painting can now be seen hanging in the Library reference room. Gravatte will have a booth at the Art Fair so stop by her booth to see some of her other lovely work and maybe take a painting home.
The Art Fair will take place in Memorial Park, 222 West Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre, on Saturday, May 5, from 9:30AM to 6:00PM and Sunday, May 6, from 9:30AM to 5:00PM and will feature works by artists and craftsmen in a wide variety of media, live music, food vendors, a children’s art project, and a silent auction. Proceeds from the Art Fair benefit the Sierra Madre Library. For more information, visit our website at www.sierramadrelibraryfriends.org or call 626 355-7186.