'Michigan 4' exhibit gallery opening

In The Michigan 4, artist Judy Munro brings her work back to HVCA’s gallery in a unique exhibit showcasing Michigan’s magnificent seasons, as she feels, sees and interprets them.

Munro’s previous HVCA exhibit, Face to Face, took place in June 2011.

Her new exhibit opens with a gallery reception from 7-9 p.m. Friday, Oct. 5, which includes light refreshments and the opportunity to meet the artist.

 “My landscapes are a combination of observation, imagination and ‘memory fragments,’ bits and pieces of sights, sounds, smells and feelings remembered from childhood, a myriad of lasting impressions now translated, alla prima, into paint on a surface,” explained Munro. “I recall summer trips, bracketed with endless, fluid roadside montages. Fields and farmland, forests and sky, melting into ribbons of color and texture, as we passed, on our way to anywhere in Michigan.

“I remember forest treks into magnificent cathedrals of nature’s stillness, trees so tall they gobbled up the sky, allowing only occasional shafts of sunlight to pierce their canopy and create altars on the forest floor, while patches of light lay strewn like gold coins, creating paths that beckoned you to venture deeper into the woods,” added Munro.

“There were cottage vacations spent lakeside where we ended every day huddled in wool blankets on a shore or dock, into late in the evening, breathing in the cool summer dampness, while the night sky put on a show of light and stars,” she stated. “The shared darkness seemed sacred and comforting and the vast blackness of the lake was made “safe” by the glow from the cottage lights and campfires of other vacationers. These are just some of the remembered impressions repeatedly encoded in so many of my landscapes.”

Munro has been involved in art as long as she can remember. Early on in grade school, she drew a picture of a horse in a class. The teacher showed it to the principal, who called her parents to encourage her artistic ability. Her parents became her biggest supporters, who looked for every opportunity to promote her artistic growth. She attended the local high school for a year, but her parents insisted she switch to Cass Technical High School, which had a well-known and respected art department.

“It was a fabulous place to be,” she recalled. “Not only did art students have a demanding series of classes in school, they also had on-site drawing classes and figure classes after school in a nearby studio.”

Munro soaked all the information up. She credits Cass Tech with laying the foundation of her work in the areas of color, perspective, figure drawing and art appreciation.

In her senior year at Cass Tech, she won a competitive scholarship to attend Pratt Institute in New York and studied there for two years. She was called home due to a family illness and held several art-related jobs in the Detroit area. All the while, she kept working on her own art, selling some drawings and mixed-media pieces at area art festivals, but she didn’t have a strong focus or direction.

In 1974, Munro chose to enter the corporate design world, where she pursued a successful career for 33 years, which culminated in the creative director position for a local corporation. While working, she also completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Wayne State University, attended two years of law school, exhibited at a local gallery and was juried into the 39th Annual Midyear Show at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio.

In January 2009, the company she worked for downsized; creative functions and management were moved to their New York office and her department was eliminated.

Munro was at a crossroads regarding future employment, and made the choice to pursue art as her vocation. After many years, in March 2009, Munro once again picked up a paintbrush and recommitted herself to her art. Since then, her work has been shown in numerous statewide juried shows and solo exhibitions.

She and her husband, Alex Delvecchio, and their two Basset Hound "kids," Sam and Jazz, live in Rochester Hills.

Gallery hours for The Michigan 4 take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays through Saturday, Oct. 27.

For more information about HVCA or this exhibit, call 248-889-8660.