Ouachita Stories

Donnie Copeland, Ouachita Baptist University assistant professor of Art and Design, is displaying artwork in a variety of locations in Arkansas. Copeland currently has four pieces at Justus Fine Art Gallery in Hot Springs and one piece in the traveling Arkansas Art Council Exhibit Small Works on Paper 2010. During April, he also displayed a solo exhibit, An Emphasis on Substance, at the Boger Art Gallery at the College of the Ozarks in Point Lookout, Mo.

Copeland explained that his work is primarily “about its own visuality: mainly color, pattern and texture; it doesn’t rely on being overly complex. The notion of the work being about something can be extended to landscape, including patterns and movement in fields, or the stripes revealed in roadside cutaways of hills.  Somehow this is all connected to travel and being on the road which also includes the occasional urban experience, all of which influences what I do.”

Justus Fine Art Gallery was founded in 2004 by Dolores Justus and features many different styles and mediums of art from both established and emerging artists.

Small Works on Paper is a year-long traveling exhibit sponsored by the Arkansas Art Council. This is the 23^rd year for the exhibit and out of 300 entries submitted, only 39 works were chosen. The exhibit was juried by Suzanne Bloom, professor of art at the University of Houston and travels to 10 galleries throughout Arkansas this year. It was most recently on exhibit in the Smith-Pendergraft Campus Center at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith. Other locations on the tour include the South Arkansas Arts Center in El Dorado, Arts Center of the Ozarks in Springdale, the art galleries at the University of Arkansas-Little Rock and the Trieschmann Gallery at Hendrix College in Conway.

Copeland will also show work in the Trinity Art Museum in Little Rock’s Arkansas Historical Museum this fall.

For more information, contact Donnie Copeland at [email protected] or (870) 245-5559.

By Meg Gosser