Albany native Rob Matre will give an Artist Talk at the Albany Museum of Art at 5:30 pm Friday, April 19, highlighting the final weekend of his Gold Soundz exhibition in the AMA’s Haley Gallery. Gold Soundz serves as a retrospective of 12 years of Matre’s Plaid Columns series of mixed-media paintings, with the artist choosing three of his favorite paintings from each year, for a total of 36 paintings in the show.

“This is an opportunity to meet the artist, and to get a last look at this exhibition,” Director of Education and Public Programming Annie Vanoteghem said. “The final day for Gold Soundz and our other winter/spring exhibitions—Educators as Artists, Andy Warhol: Hand-Colored Flowers, and the first part of the year-long Old Masters Drawings from the Shaffer Collection—is Saturday, April 20.”

On Friday evening, Matre will discuss Plaid Columns, the body of work that has defined his career over the past decade, and his 30-year history as an Atlanta gallery owner, as well as his years photographing golf tournaments on the PGA Tour and hosting 790 The Zone's golf radio show. The Artist Talk is a free event that is open to the public.

Matre's paintings and photographs are included in many prominent collections, including Google, AT&T, American Express, King & Spalding, and the University of Georgia football and golf headquarters, as well as many golf and country clubs around the country.

Included in Gold Soundz are a handful of works that focus on Albany and Southwest Georgia, as well as other scenes from around the state. Also featured are paintings on the subjects of sports (football, basketball, golf), music (Rolling Stones, Ray Charles, Levon Helm), and historical and popular icons (Marilyn Monroe, Teddy Roosevelt, Barney Fife).

Gold Soundz will close at noon on Saturday. Educators as Artists, Andy Warhol: Hand-Colored Flowers, and Old Master Drawings from the Shaffer Collection will close at 5 pm.

Educators as Artists is the 5^th biennial juried exhibition of works by college and university art educators from South Georgia and North Florida. The exhibition in the upstairs McCormack Gallery includes work by LeVetta N. Davis, Albany State University (ASU); Lindsay Godin, Valdosta State University (VSU); Abigail Heuss, VSU; Katie Kehoe, Florida State University; Nan Liu, Florida A&M University, Edrian Mallory, Albany Technical College (ATC); Scott Marini, ASU; Hyekyung Hannah Seo, ATC; Libby McFalls, Columbus State University; Laurel J. Robinson, Georgia Southwestern State University, and Ansley Simmons, ASU.

Andy Warhol: Hand-Colored Flowers from the AMA’s permanent collection is a set of 10 prints in which Warhol free-handed several flower drawings inspired by those photographed in the catalog Interpretive Flower Designs by Mrs. Raymond Russ Stoltz. In 1974, Warhol had his drawings transferred onto silk screens to produce multiples, printed by Alexander Heinrici. After the screen-printing process, the artist hand-painted each of the prints with Dr. Martin’s aniline watercolor dyes.

Though the series Hand-Colored Flowers has multiple editions in numerous museums and institutions around the world, each set of 10 has the artist’s personal touch. The AMA has editions 40/250. Donated to the Albany Museum of Art in 1984, Warhol’s 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 that he is known for. 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.

Old Master Drawings from the Shaffer Collection in the Hodges Gallery is a year-long exhibition of drawings from the extensive collection of about 150 works donated in 1988 to the Albany Museum of Art by Randolph Shaffer, Jr. The drawings in this collection include many sophisticated preliminary studies required to perform a masterwork of a painting.

Born in Albany in 1914, Shaffer 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 are sourced from various European artists, many of whom are lesser-known or unknown, and were collected during Shaffer’s time abroad. A new selection of drawings from the Shaffer Collection will be on display when the AMA’s Summer Exhibitions open on May 9.