BMCA hosts 'Emerging Artists' exhibit returns for 16th year

Upper Gallery to display work of art students

Jessica Klarp
Guest contributor
The Valley Echo
March 1, 2022

Barry Dingman’s piece, “A Rose is a Rose,” which incorporates oil paint on canvas, was among the pieces featured in BMCA’s “Emerging Artists” exhibit in 2021. The show will open for its 16th year, March 4. Photo courtesy of BMCA

Throughout the year, down in the basement of the Black Mountain Center for the Arts, artist Bob Travers and his students work to improve their artistic skills and create works of art for which they can be proud and hopefully share with others. Some of the students have been with the instructor for the duration of his 16 year tenure at the Arts Center. Others have just dipped their toes in the experience of painting or drawing. Under the tutelage of this masterful teacher thoughts are translated on to canvas and images come to life.

 Those images will be on display in the Upper Gallery, beginning Saturday, March 4, with an artist’s reception open to the public from 5 - 6:30 p.m. The “Emerging Artists” show will run through March 25. The Upper Gallery is free and open to the public from 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Masks are still required inside the Arts Center. 

Travers is a nationally recognized wildlife artist whose career has spanned over 30 years in the fields of fine art and illustration. He is versed in a wide array of mediums, styles and subject matter, with the goal of guiding students in the mediums that inspire them including in acrylics, watercolor, oil, scratch board, colored pencil, charcoal and pastel.

Class sizes were decreased to accommodate the small room where instruction occurs, but the change brought big results. Students who were tentative have gained confidence. Some of these students discovered during the pandemic shutdown that they have a passion to create but needed someone to guide them. Travers came to their rescue. Several of his more established students’ work is so detailed and lush that the title “emerging” hardly applies. 

Classes are taught Mondays and Tuesdays in the classroom that used to be the town’s jail, but rather than confining students, the room (and the instructor) nurtures their talents. The “Emerging Artists” show will fill the gallery with a wide range of work, including pieces by Travers himself. 

The Black Mountain Center for the Arts is located at 225 West State Street. For more information visit blackmountainarts.org or call 828-669-0930.