BLACKSBURG REGIONAL ART ASSOCIATION
We create, teach, exhibit, appreciate and play with ART!!!
BRAA
Bulletin Board
Check out local art news and opportunities on our BIG NEWS page!
Our president, Charlotte Chan has posted a new update for May/June! Click here to see what our illustrious president has to say.
MONTHLY MEETING
Friday, July 14
WEEKLY ART MEETUP
Tuesdays, 1:30 - 4:30 PM
Glade Church (Basement)
Come create with friends!
Sign up each week here.
Cancelled June 13
Do you have an ART EXHIBIT, WORKSHOP or ART PLAYDAY coming up? We can post any BRAA related events or member events on this Bulletin Board or our BIG NEWS page. Send relevant information to marketing@blacksburgart.org
With over 100 members, we are painters, sculptors, photographers, wood carvers and turners, glass fusers and cutters, weavers, quilters, multi-media maniacs, copper artists and more. We are professionals, homemakers, retired folk, college students and youth. All ages and persuasions are among us and new members are always WELCOME.
Meet one of our favorite longtime BRAA members, Sally Mook.
Sally Mook
CREATOR PAINTER
...in the Truest Sense
Sally is walking her buddy Bella, a small fierce pup determined to protect her owner as I drive up to her house set in the midst of Jefferson Forest. Bella is very cautious to let this stranger come around her lovable owner. I am excited to interview Sally for this first BRAA member website feature you are reading now. I have always admired her artwork and in fact own several of her paintings that adorn my walls. Several years back, she was generous enough, to trade some paintings with me, though I see her creations as far more valuable than my own.
As we walk in her home, and enter her family room, she has 13 recent paintings lined up, leaning against furniture, getting prepared to hang at her upcoming show at ART PANNONIA. If you haven’t had the fortune of seeing Sally’s works, you should really go to this show which will open Friday, March 3 (reception from 5:00 to 7:00) and hang through the end of May. Honestly, you might also want to email Sally (sally.mook@yahoo.com) for a personal tour of her studio and see so much more, literally dozens of paintings lining her walls throughout her home and especially in her studio. It is a treasure trove of Sally’s dreams, fantasies, portraits, landscapes and more - so worth the look see, and intriguing to hear the stories that inspired the paintings.
Sally works at a large desk top in her basement studio, keeping warm by a wood burning stove in the winter. She also has multiple easels holding paintings in progress, as well as numerous paintings on paper stored in print hammocks. She’s got space. She almost religiously goes down to her “refuge”every day, if not to paint, then to prepare background papers or frame finished masterpieces. It’s not a ‘have to’ thing, it is very much a WANT to thing, painting is a positive compulsion for her. She is prolific, sometimes generating several new pieces a week. She worries about her children having to deal with mass of works she has accumulated. We would all do well to help alleviate this ‘burden’ by adding a “Sally Mook” to our collection, as her name is going to be revered as one of the region’s best. Regardless, Sally’s children wouldn’t have Sally quit painting for the world. It is her passion; it soothes her soul. She speaks of the comfort it gave her after losing her husband several years ago. In addition to comfort though, the ideas seem to burn in her brain until they escape on a canvas and so… she paints.
I ask her about some of the unique characters that are central to a series of “web” paintings (she used Halloween spider webbing to make textured grounds). I ask if she had reference photos or knew these people. “No” she says, “I SEE them in the webbing and pull them out.” Some of them have such expressions, such cool hair or some other detailed feature, I am in awe that they just float out of her imagination - this is what I mean, Sally is a creator in the truest sense.
"Intermission" by Sally Mook
On display at ART PANNONIA
March 10 - May 28
Sally's love for background textures is evident in this piece. She is known to use spider webbing, stencils, and stamps to create a deep background that pulls your eye into the painting.
"Profusion" by Sally Mook
On display at ART PANNONIA
March 10 - May 28
Sally's love for background textures is evident in this piece. She is known to use spider webbing, stencils, and stamps to create a deep background that pulls your eye into the painting.
Sally's is happy to give anyone a tour of her studio and see the myriad of original paintings from her dedicated productivity.
Sally has most recently worked in oils as she inherited some supplies and canvases from her artist friend Carl Pfeiffer. Not only was he a friend, but someone whose art she admires enough to have on her dining room wall. Another painting from an artist friend, Jordi Calvera, hangs on the opposite wall. Blacksburg has had a plethora of talented artists, including Sally and many more of our BRAA members, that have made a lasting impression for so many others.
At 87 years old, Sally Mook is as fresh as a daisy. Joy and art are inseparable for Sally and her artistic pleasure is contagious when you speak with her. Her show at ART PANNONIA is titled “Swan Song” because it is likely to be one of her last major endeavors to exhibit publicly. Don’t miss an opportunity to meet her, share a conversation with her over a cup of coffee. Her creative heart will be displayed in my home and many more for generations to come. How lucky we are at BRAA to know her.
- written by Ava Howard