Virginia Highlands Festival Unveils 2008 Signature Art & Theme
"Celebrating 60 Years: Reflections of the Past...Visions of the Future"
Lee Coburn of Glade Spring, Va. was extremely excited to receive the invitation to be the signature artist for the 2008 Virginia Highlands Festival, which will be held July 26-August 10.
"It was certainly a surprise and a great honor to be asked to be the featured artist, and especially for the Virginia Highlands Festival's 60th anniversary," he says. "After discussions with the people at the Festival, I set out to capture the theme, Celebrating 60 Years: Reflections of the Past...Visions of the Future."
In the signature art, the past is represented on the left and the future on the right. There are some obvious references to the past and future theme in the images used, such as a seedling and blooming flowers. Also, each of the 60 panels represents a year, for the 60th anniversary. They collectively form a "wall" made up of individual "building blocks" of a dream. There are also references to Festival founder Robert Porterfield, the Barter Theatre, and Martha Washington Inn.
Coburn spent several months creating rough sketches and a "final" painting, using traditional mediums such as oils and acrylic, as well as integrating spray paint. These layers were built upon one another, then meticulously sanded, then built up again -- the entire process repeating itself several times to build a rich array of colors, textures, and layers. From there, Coburn took 60 individually detailed photographs of the canvas. These were reassembled into an electronic file and manipulated on the computer. The final output is a digital print.
He explains, "Since I design on computers every day, I'm very comfortable creating that way. Computer imagery is a very modern medium. I wanted to integrate this medium into the final piece to provide juxtaposition between the modern ways to create images -- the computer -- and the traditional ways of painting on a canvas. This, too, is a reinforcement of the theme of past and future."
As for the actual imagery, Coburn finds it difficult to discuss his work. "I like it to stand for itself," he says. "Nevertheless, I wanted to depict the inception of this creative idea, not just as it applies to art, but also as it applies to our society and its evolution into a building block. That building block is then repeated and builds an entity that has a life of its own."
In 2007, Coburn's paintings were featured in "From These Hills: Contemporary Art in the Southern Appalachian Highlands" at the William King Regional Arts Center, and he had an installation at the Biennial Faculty show in The 1912 Gallery at Emory & Henry College.
Coburn owns Coburn Creative, an ad agency with clients throughout the world. The business has been successful enough to allow him to hire two fulltime employees, Amber Brown and Jason Willis, both graduates from Emory & Henry College. "This is what I want to see in this area, our most talented individuals staying here. I want to compete with our brightest and most talented and not against them," Coburn says. The agency's web site is www.coburncreative.com
In 2004 Coburn moved from Atlanta, Ga. to Glade Spring, Va. where he purchased and restored property on the Town Square; this property now houses two commercial spaces, Coburn's residence, and an art studio. The restoration was featured on HGTV's show ReZoned. Coburn recently purchased more property on the square with the same intentions to refurbish them into commercial and residential space. He says, "Many other owners are fixing up their buildings, too. I'm very glad to be here and am enjoying the rebirth."
Coburn is a member of the Town Council in Glade Spring, as well as a professor at Emory & Henry College, where he teaches web design and advanced graphic design classes. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Atlanta College of Art (now Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta).
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