Trees, celebrated in works of art, by Linda Palmer will be featured at this month’s ARTS Encounters event at the Benini Galleries and Sculpture Ranch, Saturday, November 29th and Sunday, November 30th.

For the last 25 years, Palmer’s primary focus has been interpreting and celebrating Arkansas landscapes. Her recent series on trees actually got its start in Texas, when she visited the Hill Country and depicted trees on the Benini Sculpture Ranch in a series entitled Dancing Trees. This in turn led to the Champion Trees of Arkansas, which started with Palmer’s journey to locate, photograph and create drawings of the largest trees of their kind on record with the Arkansas Forestry Commission. The project began as art and nature, but evolved to embrace history as many of the people who nominated trees wanted to share their experiences and history of the trees.

Palmer hopes to have the majestic tree at the Johnson Settlement Ranch that she photographed on her last visit completed in new artwork, in time to bring it with her for the ARTS Encounters event.

Palmer, known for her unique prismacolor works, is a signature member of The Colored Pencil Society of America, and her artwork has been featured in state and national juried exhibitions. She has exhibited and lectured at universities and art centers for many years and her drawings and paintings are in many private and corporate collections.

Palmer’s recent travels to Africa, Egypt, France and Italy have led to new paintings of doorways, palaces, wildlife, and architectural elements of the past. Her work can be seen on her website: LindaWilliamsPalmer.com.

Catharine Cary, who now has a winter studio in Johnson City on Nugent Street, will be sharing work she has completed here, both at ARTS Encounters and at the Kirchman Gallery. Cary lives most of the year in Paris, France but decided to winter this year in Johnson City, and has rented the former Goldstein Gallery.

The reception to celebrate this exhibition at Kirchman Gallery follows ARTS Encounters at the Nugent Street exhibition facility. The Black Spur Emporium and Gallery and Watson Gallery will also welcome guests that evening.

A graduate of Georgetown University and the Institute of International Relations of Cameroon, Catharine Cary has worked, lived and travelled in 27 countries worldwide. A 1982 graduate of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, in 1983 she earned a DESS (Masters equivalent) in International Relations as a Rotary Scholar in Cameroon, West Africa. In 1997, after 10 years of running three large scale urban development projects in NY, she went to France for a week. A week became a month; a month became six while studying at the Beaux Arts. She returned to NY, continued at the Art Students League and the New York Studio School. Returning to Paris in 1998, she showed her first work in 1999, and moved into her own studio in 2000. She plans to return there in February, after the winter months in Johnson City.

Photographs by Joe Walsh will also be featured in a slide show during ARTS Encounters. Walsh, who attended the renowned Brooks Institute of Photographic Arts and Science in Santa Barbara, currently lives in Blanco.

He holds a B.S. degree in English from the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts and a Master of Arts in Photography from Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont. He has taught in the Art Department at West Texas A&M University Canyon, TX and recently retired from Amarillo College (TX) where he taught portraiture, landscape and studio photography.

Walsh’s approach to photography is what is referred to as “straight” meaning his aim is to show things as they are. His primary interest lies in this world and its inhabitants, photography being the means by which he investigates them.

It is Walsh’s belief that photography was “born perfect” for this task and requires no intrusive actions from its practitioners to “improve” it.

ARTS Encounters is open to all, free of charge. For more information, call 868-5244 or visit www.ArtsEncountersatBeninis.com.