Lux Art Institute begins seventh season

Lux Art Institute, closed for the month of August, is poised to enter its seventh season of welcoming selected artists from around the world to spend a month in residence, creating new work and interacting with visitors of all ages.The 2013-14 season will open Sept. 5 with Matthew Cusick, a native New Yorker, currently based in Texas, who makes haunting collages out of fragments of maps inlaid in acrylic.

“Through a process of cutting up and reassembling fragments of maps from different places and times, I am attempting a more complete representation of an existence,” he writes on his website. In honor of his first long-term stay near the Pacific, he will create a large-scale ocean collage.

Nov. 5 will bring Melora Kuhn, a painter who draws her themes from history and myth. Born in Boston and educated at the Art Institute of Chicago and the School of Lorenzo di Medici in Florence, Italy, she lives in Brooklyn, and her work reveals a world where classical and contemporary elements coexist. The piece she creates at Lux will be a response to the history of the American West, and the extermination of the buffalo.

Three more resident artists will round out the season in 2014: Multimedia artist Marcus Kenney, from Savannah, Ga., is known for his “reclaimed taxidermy,” a backhand homage to the family of hunters he grew up in, and his whimsically macabre Southern Gothic pieces. At Lux, he will be working on his version of Bruegel’s Tower of oil painting reproduction.

Jarmo Makila, an artist from Finland who explores disturbing memories of his boyhood experiences, will create a series of clay sculptures of boys, one for each day of his stay that Lux is open to the public.

Beverly Penn, from Austin, Texas, finds inspiration in nature, interpreting delicate flora in durable bronze. She will collect and cast some of San Diego’s native plants, a number of which can be found in Lux’s own native gardens.

The plan was to meet at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday at a coffee shop at Fourth and Gaskill, where Kelly likes to read. But it was pouring rain. So Miller called Kelly on her cellphone - yes, she has a phone - and they agreed to meet at Kelly's current residence, under the canopy at Headhouse Square. Kelly went over to Xochitl, a Mexican restaurant, grabbed a cardboard box from the trash, and folded it nicely as a seat for her guest. Miller, a retired English teacher at Edison High in Philadelphia who lives in Society Hill Towers, took up painting eight years ago.

She sees beauty in the most unfortunate and met Kelly this winter, when Kelly moved back from Boston after nine years. Kelly, who modeled in the nude for many years for art students at the University of Pennsylvania, is quite proud of her appearance. She's trim, clean, with clear skin. She eats no meat or dairy. "I can't keep my sanity unless I have my nutrition," she says. Were it not for her red and blue shopping carts spilling over with plastic bags holding all her worldly possessions, Kelly might resemble any of the other women of Society Hill, right down to the Crocs on her feet, though, she says, "I prefer Benjamin Lovell."

He also demonstrated his artistic prowess by finishing a small painting in front of the guests. The piece was then auctioned off.Describing his art as more expressionist than abstract, Quah said he painted intuitively without any pre-conceived notion of how the final product would turn out.He said his style was influenced by Van Gogh, De Kooning, Zou Wai Ki and other artists."My work depends on my mood. Most of the time, I paint in a happy mood as I always keep myself happy," said Quah, who was born in Taiping, Perak, but moved to Penang when he was 17.

He has written articles for international publications and been interviewed and featured on radio, television and in the print media many times.He said his Retrospective exhibition at the Penang State Art Gallery in November 2011 was one of the highlights of his career.

While enjoying his time back in Penang, spending time with his family, meeting old friends and making new ones, he said he was still painting in his studio, looking over the horizon for more challenges and new ground to cover.

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