[USAO-ArtGallery] New Art Exhibit Features Lee's Garden, Morgan's Landscapes

Mon Sep 8 16:54:02 CDT 2008

Lee's Garden and Morgan's Landscapes
Inspire Two Art Exhibits in Lawton

LAWTON - Some gardens generate much more than flowers or produce.  Some are
to be experienced, creating lifelong impressions in their visitors.

Oklahoma's foremost art historian, Cecil Lee, brings his love of gardens to
life in a new exhibition at the Leslie Powell Gallery in Lawton beginning
Sept. 13. Lee directs the USAO Gallery in Chickasha after decades of
teaching art history at the University of Oklahoma.

A separate show featuring the work of landscape painter Patti Morgan of
Chickasha opens on the same day at the Powell Gallery. Both shows will open
with a reception, with refreshments, from 7-9 p.m. Admission is free.

Both artists are tied to the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma,
where Lee joined the faculty in 1991 and Morgan graduated in 1999.

Lee's "An Oklahoma Garden" features photography from his one-acre garden
inspired by the years he and his family spent near Rome while he taught in
the Academia della Arte. His idea of what a garden was, which began as a
child in northern Ohio, became more like a work of art when he saw it
cascaded down an Italian hillside. (More)

Images from the fertile mind and garden of artist Cecil Lee comprise
 a new gallery exhibit at the Leslie Powell Gallery in Lawton. A 
formal opening is scheduled at 7 p.m. on Sept. 13. At the same 
time, a new exhibit of works by Chickasha's Patti Morgan opens 
with a series of her landscapes in oil. Lee is director of the USAO 
Art Gallery in Chickasha.

"Sadly, in our culture, design has been mainly seen as a component of
advertising art," Lee said. "Then it occurred to me that by combining these
several directions I might have a direction to follow. Monet had laid out
gardens with the sole intent of painting them. My garden was already in
place. Unlike the painter who visits someone else's garden, or even a
pleasing natural site, it was my design, and it was an art statement in
itself. It was already art."

His Norman replica is his own work of art, and it is featured through the
medium of real and digitally enhanced photography.

Lee first tasted garden life as a child. 

"We always had a large vegetable garden," he recalled. "We were a large
family, dependent on canning and storing food for the long winters of
northern Ohio. . During the Korean War, I was assigned to the Sixth Army
Headquarters at the Presidio of San Francisco. This was my first experience
of actually living in a garden. That is, a garden designed to be experienced
rather than to provide food or cut flowers. My army years were followed by
formal studies in art history and art theory. My specialty was Eighteenth
Century British taste, and I became acquainted the great English landscape
artists of the late baroque.

"In the early sixties I spent a summer conducting a class in baroque art in
the Academia della Arte, Rome. My family and I stayed at a convent on one of
the several hills of Rome. Here we relaxed evenings in the cloistered garden
with our two pre-school daughters."

Like the lavish gardens he visited, Lee and his wife, artist Dolly Lee,
planned their own elaborate landscape garden in Norman.

Lee's photography exhibit explores both the natural - from his garden - and
the imagination, from his computer. Following art trends in the last century
that see art more as an idea than a skill, Lee's exhibition also features
digitally enhanced abstract works from his inventive mind.

"Everything in this exhibition comes originally from either a one acre spot
of Oklahoma or from the mysterious realm of that now not uncommon domestic
machine we call the personal computer."

Morgan's show, "Repurpose," was developed by traveling life's road. 

"Working in my studio affords the solitude to reflect upon my observations
of nature," Morgan said. "From my photographs and sketches I plan
compositions that sometimes combine locations or distort the horizon. The
interactions of color and texture make the paintings come alive and capture
a perception of place."

Morgan's artistic expression, like Lee's, involves experiencing the subject.

"The images of my oil paintings are derived from flying over, driving
through and being in the landscape," Morgan said. "I am inspired by the
land's pattern, texture, and color and find the experience a respite from
contemporary life. In contrast, the imagery of my mixed media collages is
derived from an inward journey. It is a result of combining portions of
earlier drawings, prints, and paintings. These repurposed works are cut or
torn apart, edited and adhered to various support materials. The collage
components are arranged in regard to proportion, color, shape and texture;
often in a grid formation. The process of imposing order upon these altered
artworks results in a reconciled vision."

Both exhibits will remain open through the third week of October. Besides
this special evening opening, the Leslie Powell Gallery, located at 620 SW
"D" Avenue in Lawton, is open from noon to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

  _____  

NEWS FEATURE       August 26, 2008
UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND ARTS OF OKLAHOMA - CHICKASHA
CONTACTS: 
USAO - RANDY TALLEY: Public Relations, 405-574-1337, rtalley at usao.edu
POWELL GALLERY: Nancy Anderson, 580-357-9526
THE ARTISTS: Cecil Lee: 405-819-9919 or Patti Morgan: 574-2902

WITH PHOTO

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