The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University is presenting Lenny Lyons Bruno: Coal Camp Series. Self-taught artist Lenny Lyons Bruno was born in a West Virginia coal camp in 1947.
Coal Camp Series is a virtual narrative of her early years. Bruno shares her memories in large paintings that incorporate a wide variety of materials including quilts, photographs, ledgers, and found objects, many of which date back to this earlier era. Her sculptures are comprised of everyday objects reconfigured into iconoclastic forms that create a sense of reflection and wonder.
The paintings and sculptures in this series are not overtly romanticized statements, nor are they nostalgic longings for the past. Instead they are powerful mixed-media works which present complex surfaces that can be read in multiple ways.
The objects in this series are works of passion created after years of putting distance between the present and the past. They are stand-ins or symbols for people, places and lifestyles long gone. Each work is full of tension, humor, sense of place, the familiar and the mysterious. They are also rich repositories of intimately personal and family history, objects of desire and derision, conflicted diaries of love and animosity, and of self-exploration and forgiveness.
Bruno’s mixed-media contemporary paintings have been shown in one-person exhibitions at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Lewisburg, West Virginia; and the Huntington Museum of Art, West Virginia. Her work has shown in group exhibitions at the Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia; and the Lexington Art Gallery, Virginia.
The catalogue produced for Coal Camp Series won top regional honors in the Arts and Sciences category of the Addy Awards. The 2011 publication Blackberry Winter, A Painted Memoir, includes sculptures and paintings by Bruno, with narrative by Beverly Tucker. Bruno has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Florida Arts Council, and the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs.
Lenny Lyons Bruno: Coal Camp Series is now open to the public and will remain on view in the Main gallery of the museum through Sunday, February 26, 2017.
The museum is excited to host a full-day workshop in conjunction with Lenny Lyons Bruno: Coal Camp Series on Saturday, February 11, 2017 from 9:00AM to 4:00PM. Patrons are invited to join exhibiting artist Lenny Lyons Bruno to explore what inspires creativity in a one-day workshop that will bring together different materials, subconsciously connecting one element to another to create a narrative reflective of one’s own life journey.
Participants will assemble a three-dimensional work of art: a “memory keeper” that will remind us that our personal relationship to objects carries heavily within it deep meanings and associations. Participants are encouraged to bring items with personal meaning to include in their assemblage.
