“The Three Graces” is our new art show in the Claire and Robert Clements Gallery. The artists,
Elizabeth Bishop-Martin; Starr Ramsey Helms; and Kim Kendall, met in Charles Warnock’s
open studio class at OCAF and found they enjoyed working together in class, sharing each
other’s progress, and that exhibiting together works for them. Each artist brings to her work years
of education and training, studio experience, and participation in exhibits across the US and in
Canada.
Long-time UUFA member Elizabeth Bishop-Martin returned to the university classroom to study
art, her childhood joy, after she had earned a degree in psychology and worked as a
psychometrician for a short time. She graduated with honors in art from the University of
Colorado in 1981 and then went on to earn her Master of Art degree in Fabric Design from the
University of Georgia. Elizabeth says, “My art has always focused on landscape, whether it has
been realism, as in my drawings and paintings, or abstract, as the work I did in Fabric Design. I
am an avid bird watcher and have included bird portraits in this show as well as landscapes.”
Starr Ramsey Helms studied drawing, watercolor painting and art history at the Orange
County Museum of Art and Saddleback College in California and oil painting with Victor
Letonoff of Lewes, DE and Vito Leonardo Scarola, Cynthia Grilli and Ken Auster in Southern
California. She has exhibited in juried shows of the Lewes Historical Society; Saddleback
College; Lyndon House Arts Center and Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation and her work is in
over 80 private collections. She is a member of Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation; Athens Arts
Association; and Athens Area Plein Air Artists. Her work is “inspired by the people, places and
things around her, expressed with verve and joyful color. She paints from life or her own
photographs using traditional oils.”
Kim Kendall tells us, “My love of art grew and flourished under the tutelage of my Uncle Bill,
William Winston Smith, an accomplished painter and wise instructor. From the age of 7 to 17, I
spent time each summer at his restored country home in Canterbury, New Hampshire.
We would always start my visits with a picnic lunch and painting session in a pasture. We
followed this routine because he said that if you can paint a cow, you can paint anything.
Over the years, he taught me how to see the beauty in life through a painter’s eye and how to
interpret my visions through a brush and color. For the impact he made on my life, especially
during our painting time together, I will always be thankful.”
Elizabeth will give a gallery talk on April 21 at 12 p.m. The opening reception is on April
28, 12-2 p.m. All are invited! The show will run through June 23.
