The Toe River Arts Council (TRAC) numbers among its artist members quite a few couples who share a mutual interest in creativity yet who excel in different media. TRAC's Burnsville's Gallery is pleased to announce a joint exhibition of husband and wife Bobby E. and Shirley S. Phillips of Bakersville, NC, opening on Friday, August 6th, and running until September 4th. Both artists can be considered "late-bloomers"; Bobby has been turning wood since 1988, and Shirley, who works in a variety of media including oil, acrylic, watercolor, pastel, and collage, first studied oil painting in 1990. The public is invited to meet the artist couple at a reception held at the TRAC Burnsville Gallery on Friday, August 6th, from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Shirley Phillips prides herself on her versatility as an artist, on the fact that her work is constantly evolving. Her range of media, from oils to collage, allow for a broad scope of expression. As she says, "I choose the medium that best expresses my emotions about a subject." Those subjects reflect her varied travels as well as the artists who continue to move her emotionally, such as Georgia O'Keefe and the Hudson River Eight. Whether she treats landscapes, waterscapes, or floral arrangements, she works from a deep personal bond with her subjects, capturing them in the media best suited to them. Her work in oil tends to be bold and captivating, while her pastel renderings are soft and subtle. Feeling that creativity is contingent upon both experiment and openness to change, Shirley shies away from specialization or undue focus on one medium. Describing her approach as "multifaceted," Shirley adds that "my paintings are versatile, contemporary, and colorful, influenced by my years in Florida during my teaching career and my travels in retirement." And talk about versatile! Shirley has even applied scraps of old tires collected on highways to her assemblages. Ask her about her adventure with the highway patrol!

Bobby Phillips hails from Mitchell County and has been turning wood since 1988, a year before retiring as a weapons system analyst and computer programmer for the Lockheed-Martin Corporation. His work is usually classically-shaped vases as well as treenware, bowls, salad bowl sets, and platters. The woods he favors are walnut, maple, apple, locust, osage orange, and some exotic wood for trim. He is especially drawn to working with burls, rounded protuberances on trees caused by stress such as insects or barbed wire. Some of Bobby's work features rudimentary carvings, surface texturing of various types, and inlaid minerals such as turquoise. Typically he cuts most of his wood himself, asking his neighbors for downed trees or heading into the woods himself for his raw materials. As a student at Kentucky's Berea College he was introduced to the lathe as part of his work-study program and learned furniture-making. The gift of an old Sears lathe from Shirley one Christmas whetted his appetite for more large scale production and today his 20 x 40 foot warehouse contains two lathes, grinders, sanders, and polishers as well as an array of chainsaws. Much of his equipment, such as his dust extraction system, is custom-built by Phillips. The January 2001 issue of Woodturning magazine featured an article by Ron Hampton, "Chain Effect," describing step-by-step how Bobby inlays a strip of silver chain around the side of a bowl. Several other arts and crafts publications such as Rapid River (April 2009) have published notice of Bobby Phillips' distinctive work in native WNC woods.

Both Phillips have placed work in juried art shows and come out with "First in Category" or "Best in Show" awards. Shirley, for example, has won first place in Mitchell Co. Extension and Cooperative (1996) and Kissimmee Woman's Club shows. Bobby has won "First in Category at the Mt. Dora Art Festival and has been a winner at TRAC's Fall Festival of the Arts. Retirement and a creative home environment seem to lend additional wings to innate creativity; the Phillips are a fine example of a couple whose union nourishes their considerable ventures as individuals.

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