Announcing the arrival of Vibrant Voracity by Carolyn Albracht. Dr. Carolyn is Assistant Professor of Art Education in the department of Art and Design at Wayne State College. She is also owner and director of Blue Cat Gallery and Studio in downtown Wayne, NE. She formerly owned and operated L’eglise Art Center and Gallery in Aurora, NE and taught K-12 art at Hampton Public School in Hampton, NE. Carolyn also served as the Visual Arts Coordinator for the Fall Arts & Music Festival in Aurora from 2004-2007, and served on the Fine Arts Board of the Hamilton Community Foundation for ten years.
She has been a member of the Nebraska Art Teachers Association since 2008, serving as the organization’s secretary since 2016, and also served as the 2014 Fall Conference Chair in Aurora. Carolyn studied Studio Art and Psychology at the University of Nebraska at Kearney where she earned her BA in 1999. She continued her studies at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, receiving an MA in Museum Studies in 2003. She completed a K-12 Art Education teaching endorsement in 2009. And finally, she earned her PhD in Education Studies at UNL in August 2016. Carolyn’s personal artistic and teaching philosophy includes the idea that the arts are a necessity and not a luxury, and so she strives to make the visual arts as accessible as possible to people in her corner of the world.
ARTIST STATEMENT: My current works are created with watercolor and Prismacolor markers, a combination I stumbled upon several years ago when I first created a series of drawings done solely with Prismacolor markers. I found that the markers were transparent, as were the watercolors, and together I could create layered images that were much more visually appealing to me than using the markers alone. I enjoy the accidental quality of creating different effects with the watercolors, and the addition of the very controlled and deliberate marking of the Prismacolors to create finished images. The mediums together reflect my interest in contrast and contradiction, and the layered effect reflects my view of life and the world around me as it communicates ideas of interconnection.
More recently I have been adding other media to my paintings, such as embroidery thread, acrylic paint, and collage elements, adding more visual appeal and adding to the intended communication of layers as metaphor for my world view. Many of my compositions are culled from imagery I create intuitively while doodling and listening to music. I have filled doodle books off and on since I began teaching formally in 2009. When I sit down to create a doodle, I try not to consciously direct the images that spill forth from my pens. In this way, I view them as a kind of creative temperature-taking. Those that seem to have a strong composition and aesthetically pleasing imagery suggest that my mind is in an optimal place for creative mark-making, while others that are not so pleasing suggest to me that my creative mind is temporarily being pushed aside while I focus on other aspects of life. In a sense, the practice of creating these doodles reflects a striving for balance, which I hope is conveyed in the finished mixed-media watercolor paintings I create.