Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Field Trip: The Studios of Louis Copt and Jim Brothers

Last Friday, at the end of my 'vacation,' I had the pleasure of visiting the studio of my artist friend Louis Copt, who then brought me over to his friend Jim Brothers's studio. The Copts' house, pictured above, was designed to accommodate Louis's studio and their art collection. While I was there, I got to see pieces by local artists including Dan Coburn and Phil Epp.

Here's Louis in his studio surrounded by several of his landscapes.

In this picture, you can see that a garage door leads to his studio, facilitating the movement of art in and out of the place. I'm a little jealous of this, since to get work out of my studio I either have to take the stairs and then get through 3 small doorways and down hallways or I can take the elevator to the same doors and hallways. That's really going to be a pain when it's time to get the sins out of the studio!

Louis is known for his prairie fire paintings, like the ones pictured above. However, he also does some great figure paintings, figurative sculpture, and abstract/mixed media collage.

After chatting about various things for a while, Louis, his wife Phyllis, my husband Derek and I hopped in our cars and visited Jim Brothers's studio. Or rather, we visited his studios. Jim has 3 or 4 buildings on his land that act in some way as work space for him. The amount and variety of work he has was incredible... there was the figurative and portrait sculpture you primarily see in these photos, plus pieces carved out of wood, and assemblages created from old machines and little bronze gargoyles.
Here Louis and Jim are walking between two of the buildings.

Various historical busts, and also notice the many animal skulls Jim has collected on the walls.


Notice the scale of the full figure in the background! (I think that's Eisenhower.)
Here's an in-progress wood sculpture in one of Jim's buildings. He creates it by attaching various-sized pieces of wood to each other and then carving them, so that the finished piece will have a mosaic-like surface.

It was a fun and interesting field trip, and I loved meeting yet another talented artist. This Friday, Louis Copt will have an opening at the Leopold Gallery in the Brookside area of Kansas City, MO. I certainly plan on attending!

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