The Opening Reception for four new art exhibitions is set for 5:30-7 pm on Thursday, February 1 at the Albany Museum of Art. Featured will be Gold Soundz, paintings by Rob Matre in his collaboration Plaid Columns; Educators as Artists, a juried exhibition of works by regional university art educators; Andy Warhol: Hand-Colored Flowers, and Old Master Drawings from the Shaffer Collection

"The Albany Museum of Art is delighted to unveil four compelling exhibitions, a celebration transcending centuries and genres,” AMA Executive Director Andrew J. Wulf, Ph.D., said. “In our dedication to bringing the world's art to our cherished community, we invite you to congregate where creativity connects hearts and minds as we embrace these works together.”

Those who attend will have an opportunity to meet and hear from artists whose works are in the exhibitions. Matre, an Albany native who works and resides in Atlanta, is scheduled to attend the event, and the university and college teachers participating in Educators as Artists have been invited. The event, including drinks and hors d’oeuvres, is free for AMA donors at the Reciprocal or higher level. Entry is $15 for the general public and $10 for AMA donors at the Artist Guild level. The registration link to RSVP may be found at www.albanymuseum.com/event/winter-spring-exhibitions-opening-reception.

In the Haley Gallery, Gold Soundz will serve as a retrospective of the last 10 years of Matre’s Plaid Columns series, which he often made in collaboration with artist Evan Jones. Gold Soundz includes a selection of significant collage paintings made over the last 10 years. Recent History, an exhibition of Matre’s photography, was on view at the AMA in 2013.

Themes of place and memory run through Matre’s work. Scenes of Albany and South Georgia are recurring subjects, along with other images from the State of Georgia and beyond. His love of sports also informs his work, with a focus on the game of golf. Since 2003, he has documented professional golf tournaments and golf courses around the world, including many of the great courses of Scotland and Ireland.

Albany serves as a launching point for Matre’s creativity. His lifelong interest in art started with his passion for music, specifically with album cover art, his first source of inspiration. The title of this exhibition is inspired by the opening line of a song by Pavement, one of his favorite bands, which beckons to the listener: "Go back to those gold soundz." That line kept returning to him in preparation for this exhibition. The words played upon the notion of "going home," and this exhibition can undoubtedly be considered a homecoming.

In the East Gallery, atypical work by Pop Art icon Andy Warhol (1928-1987) will be on view. Hand-Colored Flowers is a 1974 series of 10 prints that are in the AMA Permanent Collection; in the series, Warhol free-handed several flower drawings inspired by photographs in the catalog Interpretive Flower Designs by Mrs. Raymond Russ Stoltz (A. S. Barnes & Co., Inc., 1972). Warhol had his drawings transferred onto silk screens to produce multiples, which were printed by Alexander Heinrici. After the screen-printing process, the artist hand-painted each of the prints with Dr. Martin’s aniline watercolor dyes.

“Andy Warhol brought screen printing into fine art spaces,” AMA Director of Curatorial Affairs Katie Dillard said. “His Campbell Soup Cans and portraits of Marilyn Monroe are probably his most universally recognized pieces, but Hand-Colored Flowers explores some of his work that, while lesser known, is equally clever. Only 250 editions were made, and the AMA has set No. 40 thanks to a 1984 donation.

“Hand-Colored Flowers present part of the range of the artist's work, as these prints, in particular, stray from the typical subject matter in pop culture for which he is known. Each of these works on display has an individualized nature and an alternative point of reference for the artist who usually exhibits pop culture and commercial forms in his work.”

In the upstairs McCormack Gallery, the 5^th juried exhibition of Educators as Artists, there are 16 works by 11 artists who teach at seven colleges and universities in South Georgia and North Florida. Faculty with 11 universities and colleges from Columbus, Ga., to Tallahassee, Fla., were invited to submit works.

Art educators who have works on display are LeVetta N. Davis, Albany State University; Lindsay Godin, Valdosta State University; Abigail Heuss, VSU; Katie Kehoe, Florida State University; Nan Liu, Florida A&M University; Adrian Mallory, Albany Technical College; Scott Marini, ASU; Hyekyung Hannah Seo, ATC; Libby McFalls, Columbus State University; Laurel J. Robinson, Georgia Southwestern State University, and Ansley Simmons, ASU. The jurors were Chris Johnson, a printmaker and muralist, the former director of fine arts at Andrew College, and Samantha Fields, Ed.D., lead art teacher for the Dougherty County School System.

In the Hodges Gallery, a year-long exhibition of Old Master Drawings from the Shaffer Collection will get underway. Composed in three parts, it will focus on the extensive collection of about 150 Old Master Drawings that were donated to the AMA in 1988 by Randolph Shaffer, Jr.

“The drawings in this collection include many sophisticated preliminary studies required to perform a Masterwork of a painting,” Dillard said. “These drawings are a body of casual field notes, glimpses into the artist’s thoughts, observations, and impressions. Drawings, on purpose, are smaller samples of a larger instance of work, meant to be viewed in close range. Furthermore, these drawings are, by their very nature, a more intimate experience where viewers can see the small imperfections of the figures and last-minute decisions scrawled in with pencil or ink pen.”

Shaffer, born in 1914, became an avid collector of prints during his service in World War II when he was stationed in Paris and London. The drawings in this collection include many sophisticated preliminary studies required to perform a Masterwork of a painting. They are a body of casual field notes, glimpses into the artist’s thoughts, observations, and impressions. The drawings offer a more intimate experience where viewers can see the minor imperfections of the figures and last-minute decisions scribbled in with a pencil or ink pen.

“These selections include some of Mr. Shaffer’s notes literally on the back of the works, which he painstakingly examined for higher artistic quality,” Dillard noted. “Rather than acquiring a work because of the prestige of a named, well-known artist, Shaffer believed the quality of the drawing was more important.”

The initial group of drawings will be on view through April 20, with two later iterations of the exhibition featuring other framed works from the Shaffer Collection.

For information about the exhibitions and upcoming events at the AMA, visit 

www.albanymuseum.com.