Current Exhibitions

The Bennett Prize: Rising Voices 3

September 14th - December 1st, 2024

The Bennett Prize, created in 2018, awards $50,000 to a woman artist to create her own solo exhibition of figurative realist paintings, which then travels the country. The Prize propels the careers of women painters who have not yet realized full professional recognition, empowering new artists and those who have painted for many years. The Prize expands opportunities for the public, who may not be familiar with figurative realist painting, to learn more about the creative vision of talented women painters in this increasingly popular genre. This exhibition includes the finalists of The Bennett Prize and selected works by the previous year‘s winner.

Thank you to our sponsors:
Shannon and Peter Candler
Helen and Comer Hobbs

Zoey Frank

Painting at the Bo Bartlett Center

May 20th - December 13th, 2024

In 2021, Frank began work on a monumental 18’ x 20’ painting of a backyard gathering. The painting spans five large canvases that she has been developing separately in her studio. (The studio ceilings are only 10’ high.) She will be assembling the full painting for the first time this summer and finishing it with a scissor lift during a six-week artist residency under the high ceilings of the Bo Bartlett Center at Columbus State University. She has put about a year of full time work into this project to date.

Frank often uses a specific Baroque or Renaissance composition as the basis for a painting. In this case, she chose Velasquez’s The Spinners, which is thought of as an allegory for painting. In the foreground we witness women in the act of spinning wool and in the background a group admires a finished tapestry. Velasquez represents the material process making art from beginning to end. For this reason, The Spinners felt like an apt starting place to craft her first monumental painting.

She works over a long period of time on her canvases, building up crusty layers of figures and abstract patterns over time, gradually working towards a final version of the composition. Traces of the earlier states of the painting remain visible, creating a record of the process of making the work. This results in rough surfaces of thick paint––and a unique combination of realistic, sculptural figures with abstract patterns and shapes.

Zoey will be at the center from October 22 - November 5 during regular hours of operation.