The streets of Emporia were filled with people ready to explore the art, beautiful inventions, and the one-in-a-million pieces that downtown had to offer for Emporia’s March 1 First Friday Art Walk. Activities ranged from reading literature at Bourbon Cowboy to viewing the art exhibition at Emporia State.
The premiering artist was Onalee Nicklin at De Stijl Art, Antiques, Vintage, Modern located on Commerical St.
Nicklin liked to draw as a kid, but began to take art seriously about 20 years ago. This is her second time being the event’s featured artist.
“I do mostly graphite pencil work and color pencil,” Nicklin said. “I mess around sometimes with a little bit of paint, watercolor. Right now I’m kind of focusing on nature-type stuff, mostly wildlife that we find here in Kansas.”
Nicklin has participated in the First Friday Artwalk for several years and has been very pleased with this year’s turnout.
“(The turnout) this year has been really, really good. The fact that we had good weather really helped. I’ve been very pleased with it…it’s just that it’s really great when people come out and enjoy the local artists,” she said.
Also featured in the artwalk was Sean Roberts, the painter of the “Parables of Mayhem” exhibition at Emporia State. Roberts has been painting for 17 years and spent six years painting the work for his exhibit. Roberts teaches painting and drawing at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas and uses a lot of symbolism in the artwork classified as narrative figure work.
“It’s related, but the ones in there with more symbols like the bells, it’s a new body of work I’m starting. Thinking about symbolisms classically in paintings, how these different symbols mean different things and also like how superstitions may start, thinking about maybe the bell purifies the soil she’s holding or the divining rod to find water,” he said.
Roberts was inspired by superstitions in Appalachia, a geographical region of the United States composed of the central and southern regions of the Appalachian Mountains.
“I’ve watched a documentary about witchcraft and witchery in the Appalachia and sort of how those kind of superstitions develop,” Roberts said. “They were telling stories about different things they would do. For instance, tie a knot on a string and rub it on your wart and bury it…as the string rots, your wart rots off. That develops out of being in a tough time where those people that had those superstitions were raised in a time where they had to grow their own food. If they fell, they didn’t eat, if their children got bit by a snake or caught a fever, they couldn’t get to a doctor in time, they might die… and so within the paintings here, I’m imagining some kind of hard space like that.”
For now, ESU is Roberts’ exhibition’s last stop. He says the work presents a sort of timeless feel that develops its own superstitions and symbols.
“But who knows what time it is, if it’s the past, present, or future. Different universe altogether. It’s a little ambiguous. Maybe it’s generations after some great war, economic downfall, ecological disaster, or whatever you can imagine,” he said. “So then, I’m starting to explore these people, their portraits and these symbols, interact in this universe, how they’re using them. So, in a way, I’m kind of creating my own superstitions and symbols within those paintings.”
