Pattern Play: Glory Day Loflin and Bella Wattles
Opening reception January 17th 6-8pm
Event Types: Visual Arts
Jan 7, 2025 10:00 AM — Feb 1, 2025 4:00 PM
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Contact Information
Liz Rundorff Smith
864-252-5858
[email protected]https://artandlightgallery.com/https://www.instagram.com/artandlightgallery/https://www.facebook.com/artandlightgallery/Details
Art & Light Gallery is pleased to present “Pattern Play”, a two-person exhibition of work by Glory Day Loflin (Greenville, S.C.) and Bella Wattles (Philadelphia, P.A.) launching on the Art & Light website and in the gallery at 10am (EST) on Tuesday, January 7 with an opening reception on Friday, January 17 from 6:00 - 8:00 PM. “Pattern Play” is a two-person exhibition that approaches traditional still-life through the lens of contemporary painting. Loflin and Wattles are interested in the visual language of the domestic as a reference to the hand that places, organizes, and orientates within the home.
Glory Day Loflin was raised in a rural setting in South Carolina. She graduated with concentrations in Painting and Sculpture from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in 2014 and earned an MFA in Painting and Sculpture from Clemson University in 2023. She has participated in numerous assistantships at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts and Penland School of Craft as well as admission to the Penland Winter Residency for ceramics in 2020. Her work can be seen in New American Paintings, Southern Living, Traditional Home, Create! Magazine and HGTV's series "Happy at Home with the Benkos" via Magnolia Network.
Bella Wattles is an emerging, self-taught artist based in Philadelphia, recognized for her maximalist, whimsical still life compositions. Drawing on themes of nostalgia and femininity, her work blends narrative elements, creating intimate vignettes where the cast of characters come to life. Wattles is drawn to still life as a genre because it allows her to convey a new narrative beyond just capturing reality. She thinks of her paintings as scenes in a play, featuring characters such as toy cars, fruits, flowers, and patterned fabrics.
While both artists similarly utilize vibrant color, pattern, and dynamic composition, their individual approach to material is importantly different. Wattles’ detailed approach to oil paint application with brush on canvas lends itself to whimsical story-telling where objects are theatrically animated as subjects within the work. Loflin's craft-adjacent painting practice references her grandmother’s textile art through the visual language of design. She creates quilt-like surfaces through many hand-stenciled layers of non-traditional paint on wood. Collectively the work included in “Pattern Play” considers how our interior selves are projected in the spaces we inhabit through the objects we opt live with.
