Cerro Coso artists display work in show this coming Tuesday

By Eva Poole-Gilson

The students in Cerro Coso Community College’s art classes will celebrate their new work with a show opening November 15th, Tuesday, at the Bishop campus. Art professors Patty Holton, Theresa Otto, and Deborah Lurie invited their painting/drawing  and ceramics students to put together a joint show so the community could see and enjoy original art of differing types. The reception for the show will be held from 5-7 p.m. in the Learning Resource Center at the College.

Ceramics by Professor Theresa Otto

Patty Holton and Theresa Otto are presently co-teaching the Ceramics class, with an enrollment of about twenty, most of whom will be represented in the show. Patty has taught for Cerro Coso Community College for the past seven years. The Ceramics classes offer techniques in hand-building and throwing-on-the-wheel with clay. Ms. Holton’s brain-child was the tile mural called Celebrating the Sierra, recently installed on the east, outside wall of Bishop’s branch of Inyo County Library, downtown. The mural, highlighting the flora and fauna of the Eastern Sierra, was five years in the making, worked on by 125 people and spearheaded by a faithful corps of nine. The tiles for the mural were created and fired at Cerro Coso Community College and stored, when necessary– until installation, at the home of Betty Cameron, a member of the faithful corps. Patty, who herself created tiles for the mural, has also shown her work—oil paintings and mixed media creations—in galleries here and on the East Coast.

“Why encourage art students to display their work?” The three professors gave numerous reasons: to spark their creativity; to inspire their continuing efforts; to encourage them to value their own ingenuity; and to see their work in context with other students’ work.  Theresa Otto offered one particularly important answer. She talked about an art class she’d taken in college; even though she became and worked as a nurse, she always hankered back to that art class, how much she enjoyed it, how much she missed it. She found that it had kept a kind of balance for her during college years—in the scale of academics, personal life, and future plans and work prospects. Theresa eventually gave up nursing to devote her work efforts to art, to the remembered value with which it had enriched her life. “A show like this,” she said, “might keep that important spark of interest in art alive in these students after graduation.”

Deborah Lurie has been teaching at Cerro Coso Community College for four years. This semester her painting and drawing students have already visited local art galleries and also enjoyed a few “plein-air” classes. In our unique outdoor world, the latter certainly affords them the opportunity of studying composition, color, and some of the most beautiful subject matter in nature. Since her own college days, Deborah has been a working artist, over the years perfecting her individually distinctive style in watercolor, pen and ink, and charcoal. She also creates hand-built sculpture.

Tile by Professor Patty Holton

A piece or two from each professor will also grace this show, on display through November 28th only—so hurry down to the reception at the Learning Resource Center of Bishop’s Cerro Coso Community College, just off Line Street, five miles west of Bishop. Please call 760.872.1565 or 760.872.5303 if you’d like more information. Art classes will be available for registration for the Spring 2012 Semester at both Bishop and Mammoth campuses. Open House registration is from 12-6 p.m on Monday, December 5 (Bishop) and 12-6 p.m. Tuesday, December 6 (Mammoth).