From Potsdam, NY to Point Loma in San
Diego, to Skaneateles. From the Tree of Life, to
Between Heaven and Earth, to
the Japan Bird Project
it's hard to pigeon hole (pun intended) Warner Varno and her art. The
word “beautiful” might suffice, yet somehow it even comes up
short.
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| Warner Varno |
Warner and her art,
mixed media on canvas, are featured at Gallery 54 throughout the
month of January and into mid-February. On January 27 besides the
impressive pieces on exhibit and available for purchase, Warner will
demonstrate the techniques that resonate in her work between 12 and
3 pm.
She
began creating her art during study halls and her lunch period while
still a high school student at Jordan-Elbridge High School. However,
she says it wasn't until she was studying fine art and anthropology
at SUNY Potsdam that she became truly engaged in learning. “
I
was learning so many different things at such a rapid pace as a
double major; I really needed to process all the thinking through my
art, all my questions and feelings about what I was learning as
well,” she says.
Her
attraction to art was found, in her words “. . . in a pull to
process the world around me and what I was learning through making
the work. I ask questions as well as record events and information
and ‘write’ stories through my artwork. Making art for me is how
I process my internal and external world, it is how I ask questions,
analyze and record new information, and sometimes to gain a level of
'understanding' I would not have access to otherwise.”
“Most
recently,” she notes, “I have found 'play' to be a highly
attractive quality of my art making process as well as the element of
surprise. I surprise myself now more than ever, letting go of some
control and allowing the work to puzzle itself out to a feeling of
completion.”
Warner
describes her work, especially the larger pieces, “as ‘bone
gardens’ of a sort,” adding “but I am also a storyteller. I am
interested in layering both the media and the subject matter, almost
weaving these elements together, sometimes literally and sometimes
using transparency. I paint about life cycles and like to envelop
all of that inside something I feel is beautiful in its own peculiar
way and also celebratory of the lived experience of being human.”
Some
of her work exhibited at Gallery 54 originated in a show titled
Bright Wings, held at
Point Loma in San Diego. Another element, The
Japan Birds Project, is a fund raising
project for Time for Art class
scholarships. Warner has 50 Western Bird
Designs currently available and 50 Eastern
designs are in the works.
During
the demonstration, Syracuse Salt Company will also provide tastings
of their variety of culinary salts.
Gallery
54 is an upscale venue for Central New York artists that showcases
and sells unique, inspired, and timeless art in a diversity of
mediums.
