The Hillsborough Gallery of Arts presents “Pattern Recognition,” a show featuring mixed metal jewelry by Nell Chandler, acrylic collage landscapes by Adrienne Knowles and hand-made functional pottery by Evelyn Ward in the gallery from August 25th through September 20th. An opening reception will be held during Hillsborough’s Last Friday Art Walk on August 28th from 6-9pm. During the art walk Cameron Mincey will play country and rock music on the front patio. 

The show includes an artist talk by Nell Chandler, Adrienne Knowles and Evelyn Ward in the gallery on Saturday, September 12th at 4pm.

The commission for a ring inspired a new line of work for jeweler Nell Chandler. The customer wanted a band with brass foliage all around it. Though Chandler often depicts foliage on her jewelry, usually she paints the image on the metal and sets it in clear resin. The intricacy of setting brass on brass was a new experience. “I was a little surprised at how meditative sawing, filing and sanding brass foliage can be, and by the unexpected patinas I achieved on the band.”

Chandler’s niece, Emily, is a stained glass artist who loves wearing her aunt’s creations. Emily fashioned little glass “gems” for Chandler. “I could feel my eyes sparkling when I opened the box and started looking through them and pairing them up. I spent the whole weekend making bezels and sketching designs for them in my sketchbook.” 

Although painter and printmaker Adrienne Knowles doesn’t approach paintings with patterns in mind, they often appear in the choices she makes – the warm colors, the tendency to place something recognizable in an abstract, favorite techniques, tools, and materials. Most of her paintings are acrylic, mixed media, and collage, though she also works in oil and cold wax medium. Some of the paintings in this show are monotypes, one-of-a-kind layered acrylic prints on paper made using a gel printing plate. Says Knowles “I love for viewers to feel a little surprise when they observe a painting from a distance, then move closer to find patterns and randomness, the energy or stillness, the familiar or just the vague reminder of something they can’t quite remember.”

Potter Evelyn Ward tells her students “when you can’t think of how to decorate a pot, go with stripes. I say it a little jokingly, but I don’t think it’s bad advice.” Ward has always been drawn to pots with patterns. Their predictable repetition and rhythm give a sense of order. 

“I’ve been employing a lot of patterns because they work so well with monoprinting, which I use on all of my work.” Monoprinting is a transfer method in which colored slip is painted onto cut pieces of paper, which are applied to a leather-hard piece of pottery after the slip has dried a little. When the paper is pulled off, the slip stays transferred to the surface of the pot. This printing technique gives the pieces a distinctive look and texture, and lends itself very well to patterns.