Christina Lavris
In Motion Staff Writer
Daytona State’s Fine Arts Gallery welcomed local artist Charles Everett on March 2 for the opening reception of its exhibition which closed at the end of March. It was the first of what art instructors hope will be an ongoing celebration of local arts and artists in the gallery.
Everett’s works are created using a wide variety of mediums and his subjects vary from portraits to abstract.
The main focus of the gallery was Everett’s mugshot series of paintings. The gallery lighting and art arrangement was set in such a way to give a feeling of isolation that drew attention to the paintings, which were housed in wooden boxes to simulate a prison cell.
Everett has an intriguing reason for choosing mugshots as his subjects.
“The mugshots really had started out as kind of a solution to a problem that I had, which was that I love to paint portraits and wanted to have an opportunity to paint a lot of different types of people, but didn’t really want to paint my family. I didn’t have time for modeling, I work full time,” said Everett, whose day job is Director of Academic Effectiveness at Full Sail University in Winter Park.
“It occurred to me that mugshots might be a great opportunity just to find faces to paint. I had no other real motivation aside from that.”
Other pieces in the gallery included paintings of Everett’s family, sourced from snapshots discovered on his cell phone.
“Camera Snapshots paint something that means significance,” said Everett. “Intimate and informal moments say a lot about a time and place.”
Everett spent time discussing art with the audience, including members of the Studio Rats students art club, who helped to set up the exhibit. At the end of the evening, Everett gave an hour-long group presentation discussing the history of his art and career.
Viktoryia McGrath, an adjunct professor in the Studio Arts Department, says the process for finding work for the exhibits involves a call for artists. “Different artists will apply to the call for artists and then we have the selection process with our fine arts faculty,” said McGrath.
The fine arts galleries are free and open to the public and occur on a monthly basis in building 520.