|
Collections Galleries - Paintings now in private, corporate, public holdings |
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
||||||
THE AVENUE NEWS January 31, 2001 |
||
Page 2 CHS art teacher sheds light on both students and subjects By Jackie Nickel
|
Caroline Jasper's talent and teaching skills recently led to her being named Outstanding Educator of 2000, an award bestowed by the Essex Middle River-White Marsh Chamber of Commerce. She was presented with a plaque in tribute to both her professional and personal accomplishments. An award winning artist who has participated in numerous solo, invitational group and juried exhibitions, Mrs. Jasper has earned many accolades throughout her 31-years teaching career. Although eligible for retirement, the energetic instructor seems reluctant to leave her students and devote full time to painting. She has, however, managed to open a new website (www.carolinejasper.com) that is successfully marketing her work to a new audience of art lovers. Asked to analyze the technique behind her talent, Caroline Jasper says, "Color and value relationships preoccupy me... I am attracted to light. Each of my paintings is about a moment of light that caught my eye, and made me stop and stare. Whether painting landscape, water, objects, or architecture, light's ability to enrich ordinary places and things is my source of motivation." Sunlight and shadow dance across the canvas in works depicting water, windows, boat hulls, and other reflective surfaces, her favored subjects. Painting primarily in her studio, Caroline Jasper either works from direct observation or references her many original photographs, revealing light and shadow at various times of day. The color red is Caroline Jasper's trademark and she begins each painting on a canvas covered with cadmium red paint. Since she likes to paint highlights first, the red background serves to anchor and preserve the other colors. "By no means the first to paint on colored ground," Jasper's choice of color is unexpected. After first painting whites and then darks, she applies a broad palette of color in short, scarcely blended brushstrokes. In the end, underlying red, still visible in bits, permeates the canvas. The red ground's presence, while more obvious at close range, produces interactive visual effects when viewed from a greater distance, Mrs. Jasper explains. Influenced by Impressionist and Post-Impressionist as well as select contemporary painters, she combines formal training with personal exploration. "My painting methods are the cumulative result of studying artists whose work I admire," she says. |
Summing up her work, "Light is everything," Caroline, a Maryland Institute Master of Fine Arts degree recipient, repeats. "Without dramatic lighting the ordinary remains boring." Caroline Jasper's life and work are anything but boring. Her new exhibit, Light Watch, opens this week at Mill River Gallery at Historic Oella Mill. It includes elements of land, water, and architecture, some of Caroline's favorite subjects. She has worked on putting it together for several months, a little each day, while also teaching full time at Chesapeake and enjoying home life in Bel Air with her husband, a retired history teacher, and four children. Family, friends and some of her students will attend an opening reception for Mrs. Jasper's latest exhibit this Saturday, Feb.3 from 6-9 p.m. While dedicated to teaching, Mrs. Jasper is equally committed to producing new works to add to her portfolio and not a day goes by that she does not devote some time to what has become a small business venture. Her oil paintings are displayed in galleries on a regular basis and have found welcome homes in private collections. One of the artist's paintings of Concord Point Lighthouse in Havre de Grace has been reproduced by Rinehart Fine Arts and sold as a limited edition print. Her success as an artist as well as a teacher serves both Mrs. Jasper ad her students well. Many come into her Fundamentals of Art class only because it is a requirement for graduation, but if she and her talented teaching colleagues Bruno Baran and Al Grosso, can capture the imagination and creativity of even a few each year, the entire community benefits. The teacher glances around the well -appointed art lab and gestures toward the CHS hallways, which showcase some masterful products of students' efforts. "Each new student arrives with an idea," explains Mrs. jasper. "But I tell them even a great idea is only an idea until you make it happen" Caroline Jasper is helping to make it happen at Chesapeake. "Our students are an inspiration." she credits. "You can't imagine how much I learn from them." |
| Essex - "It's always about the light," says will recognized Chesapeake High School art teacher Caroline Jasper. She's speaking about her work and method of oil painting, but the same could be said of her students. During 23 years at CHS (she arrived a year after the school's opening), Mrs. Jasper not only has shed light on coursework ranging from art fundamentals to art history, but has shared the spotlight of personal accomplishments with hundreds of students who have passed through the CHS studio. And that light has reflected back in a most positive way on the Turkey Point Rd. school and the department she chairs and shares with two other talented art teachers. "She loves what she does and makes every student feel like the most important one in the class," credits Linda Amtmann, driftwood artist and mother of Chris Porter, a 1998 Chesapeake grad named on of the class's two Distinguished Scholars in the Arts. It's pretty incredible that a small graduating class of 135 would have two such scholars, says Linda, especially in a school that's not even a magnet for art. "Caroline brings out the best in kids," says Amtmann. "She's one of the most admirable people I know. And most of her students don't even realize her personal talent as an artist." |
||
Critically acclaimed artist Caroline Jasper is a regular exhibitor in international and national juried shows as well as regional venues. She mounted eight solo exhibitions with in the past four years. Among her credits are Best of Show in the Havre de Grace Arts Commission National Juried Exhibition, Cover Award for North Light Magazine, and the Rottler Award for Excellence in the Visual Arts by the York Art Association, PA. Her work was also honored in Works by Contemporary Maryland Artists, A Sense of Place at the Governor's Mansion in Annapolis.|
|
|
|||||
|
|
|||
|
copyright, Caroline Jasper |
|||
|
A |
|||