Arts Galleries

Dreamland at Woolworth Walk

Woolworth Walk will highlight the artwork of Jennifer Spear in a March show titled Dreamland, running through the end of the month. There will be a reception for Dreamland at the gallery on Friday, March 3. “Dreamland was the name of a drive-in movie theater, which once stood where the Lowes home improvement store is now located,” says Spear. “All of these images were inspired by what that name and idea represent. We look at art for the same reason that we go to movies. We often want to connect with or live in a dreamland state of being, or a dreamland location, or create a world where we feel at home.”

Paisley Pug. Jennifer Spear, artist

Spear has experimented with a wide range of mediums and subject matter, but is now primarily a painter with Art Deco and Art Nouveau influences. She has been known to work with acrylics, oils and watercolors on canvas, but actually discovered her current technique by accident. “I use liquid watercolor on gesso birch board, which is not a traditional use of either medium,” she says. “In fact, the only other artist known to use it was William Blake, from whom I learned a few tips through research. So, it’s kind of a lost medium, mostly undiscovered and unexplored, which is endlessly alluring to me. I like the vividness of the colors and how I can blend the watercolor on the boards. You just can’t get the same effect with other materials.”

Spear first visited Asheville in 2010. She was so struck by the region’s beauty that she immediately returned home to Las Vegas, packed her things and moved here. “I drove all 2,000 miles alone in a dream-like state,” she says. “When I arrived I realized that I found my heaven on earth.” Her paintings in Dreamland are an effort to capture that dreamy state—the same ethereal shadow that the old movie theater casts upon the Asheville of long ago. “I hope to help people see these possibilities around them and give them brief moments of awe through the things they might see, or not see,” she says. “All this in the hopes to provoke an entryway into a beautiful world, connected to our own, but with a sense of the fantastic.”

Woolworth Walk is located at 25 Haywood Street in downtown Asheville. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call 828.254.9234 or visit WoolworthWalk.com.

Leave a Comment