Press Release

For Release:            Immediately      June 29, 2007

Attention:               Arts Calendar/Editor

Gallery:                  Phoenix Gallery Topeka

                                   2900 Oakley Ave. Ste. F  (29^th St. and Oakley near Gage)

                                   Topeka, Ks. 66614            (Brookwood Center)

Contact:                  Kyle Garcia or Pam Renovato (785) 272-3999  Fax (785)228-0999                                     

                                 Email: Phnxgal@aol.com website: www.phnxgallery.com                                                                                              

Regular Gallery Hours:     Monday-Saturday 10-6pm

Regarding:       ART SHOW OPENING and PUBLIC INTEREST STORY

Caption: 

Phoenix Gallery honors Mary Ann Earp, tireless Supporter and Fundraiser for the Topeka Humane Society with a show in her honor. Percentage of Proceeds to Benefit the Shelter.

Mary Ann Earp is a friend of the arts, a friend of Phoenix Gallery Topeka as well as a friend to all animals.  She is an avid painter and proponent of the arts as well as a tireless fundraiser and board member for the Helping Hands Topeka Humane Society. She and her best friend Bert Tyrell were the original founders of the Topeka Art Guild.  She always knows what to say to artists when they need that special boost, as creating art can be a lonely job. This month she came into my gallery gushing about her recent fundraising efforts for her beloved animal shelter.  With tears in her eyes she explained that when the new shelter is built there would be room for many more animals, lives that will be saved. This exhibit is for Mary Ann, for the animals, for her friendship. A percentage of sales from the exhibit will be donated to the Helping Hands Humane Society in Mary Ann Earp’s name.

 Title of the Opening:  For Mary Ann...and friends with love   

Feature Artist:   Kristen Raven is a professional artist and illustrator from the state of Kansas. Her recent portraits of domestic pets and farm animals painted in the fauve style of dramatic color and bold design has garnered her many national awards.                                          

Show Dates:  Opening    First Friday   July 6, 2007  4:30-9:00 PM

The Exhibit will last through the entire month of July and August. The show will stay fresh with new pieces arriving weekly.

A Percentage of sales from Exhibit will be donated to The Helping Hands Humane Society in Mary Ann Earp’s name.

“Dalmations in Progress” 42” x 30” oil on canvas -Raven

New Additions Also Featured at the Exhibit:

David Gross releases his new incredible impressionistic paintings of the state Capitol, famous Kansas gardens and other Kansas landmarks, Debra Clemente, debuts recent palette knife paintings of Kansas and Europe, new water colors by Susan Lynn and her national and international travels, new pastels by award winning artist Michael McKee and new works by regional favorite Sue Adams. 

“Statehouse at Sunset” oil on canvas –David Gross       “Kill Creek Kansas” oil on canvas – David Gross

David Gross   Biography

After more than thirty years of artistic experience, Kansas native, David Gross continues to approach each new canvas as a pristine world in which to place his mark. Just as a writer faces a blank page, an artist faces a blank canvas, and according to Gross, “There is nothing more terrifying or exciting than this blank space.”

With a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, an MFA from Indiana University, and subsequent studies at the Skowhegan School of Painting in Maine, David prefers to paint straightforward subjects - landscapes, floral landscapes, and still life studies - in a visually simplified manner, striving for clarity and exquisite color.

David’s early life was spent on a farm in Southeast Missouri, where an interest in oil painting developed at a young age. Working directly from nature, his paintings radiate a vitality and eloquence. “My life work is a journey,” Gross explains, “I paint to explore color, space and composition. It is a search, an exploration.”

Following a successful twenty-year career as an engraver, David now devotes full-time to painting. He has gained national and international exposure through the exhibition and sale of his paintings in one-man and group shows, and has received numerous awards and honors. 

    Debra Clemente, the palette knife painter of Kansas debuts recent paintings of Kansas and Europe for First Friday. These paintings are a sneak peak of a larger “One Woman Exhibit” later this October at the gallery.

“September in Kansas”                                       “Sunflower Vista” - Debra Clemente

Debra Clemente Biography

Fine art painter Debra Clemente was born Debra Ann Brown, June 16, 1959, in Ottawa, KS. At age 6 her family moved to Wichita. Whenever it was time to choose an activity with a playmate, young Debra always suggested drawing. She couldn’t get enough of it and to this day she still hasn’t.

Debra’s first mentor the late Bill Harrison, a nationally acclaimed painter and sculptor, was the father of her childhood best friend living next door in Wichita, Kansas. While playing around the home where he had his studio, Debra always had an eye out for what Harrison was doing and asked very specific questions about his varying media and approach.

Recognizing her desire and talent, Debra’s parents arranged for her to take private art lessons at the age of 12 with Wilma Wethington, a well-noted watercolorist living in Wichita. With Wethington, Debra studied drawing and watercolor painting in the studio and en-plein air on three separate painting trips to Colorado in her young teens.

Although she enjoyed the pleasures of fine art, Debra chose to study commercial art at the University of Kansas. In 1981, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Art’s Degree in Visual Communications. Throughout Debra’s work as a graphic designer and illustrator she created product displays, promotions, and identity packages for varied corporate clients. Being an artist has meant many things to Debra during the different stages of her life. Throughout her married years (now going on 26), she has worked alongside her husband David in his home design and construction business in Lawrence, KS. Her color renderings of David's home designs helped close many custom home contracts. Debra designed furniture, faux painted walls, and custom painted tiles to create dream homes and fulfill her creative side while raising small children.

When the younger of her two children started first grade, Debra reassessed her life and her art. As with many young mothers, Debra had not had taken time for herself. She decided then to put "making art" a higher priority for her pleasure and her sanity.  Experimenting at first with pastels, Debra began painting her world, which at that time still focused mainly on her children. Thus, children were often the motifs of her first work but as time pasted her world widened. During a Colorado fall oil painting excursion, with her father as her companion, Debra rediscovered her appreciation of nature’s beauty and fell in love all over again with landscape painting.

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