SoNA Beyond – Tone Painting

Explore a blend of music and visual art with this SoNA and Arts One Presents collaboration with a chance to win newly created art inspired by the performance.

Symphony of Northwest Arkansas is proud to partner with Arts One Presents and the Fayetteville Public Library for SoNA Beyond: Tone Painting. This unique concert experience will explore the connection between music and visual arts.  A group of SoNA musicians will play a variety of pieces for chamber wind ensemble while local artists will create new works in real-time inspired by the sounds they are hearing. This concert will also include a performance of Charles Gounod's Petite Symphony with visuals by video artist Romain Erkiletlian.

Featured visual artists are David Gomez and Megan Rose.  The real-time art pieces created will be part of a free drawing at the conclusion of the performance.

About the Artists:

David Gomez:  David is a Mexican American artist working from his studio in Rogers, Arkansas. He explores the place of humanity in the cosmos and the delineation of meaning and context through lines and shapes. The latter is a recurring theme of his work as he contends with the aggregate of lines, types of fonts, and how biomechanics turn into language or symbols. His work derives from a longing to understand and be understood.

As the child of Evangelical ministers in mostly Catholic Mexico, David’s customs and cultural association made him feel lost and like an outsider in his own homeland. Exacerbating these feelings of peerless sojourning, his world view developed through a lens of undiagnosed ADHD, dyslexia, along with stammering. At the age of fourteen, his family relocated to the US, and again language became an invisible border. The lack of historical context within the new culture rekindled the feelings of his earlier life. His work presents these obstacles with insidious cypher-like markings ubiquitous throughout his work. Strands and series of symbols and code merge together as if orchestrated musically. He collects symbols and imagery that are prevalent in popular culture and slowly expands into more insidious themes.

David studied art and two-dimensional design, but turned his studies to business, statistics, and data analysis research after his art career failed to launch in the early 2000s.  A catharsis of creativity in 2018 led to a body of work that has been shown in Arkansas, New York, Milan and Paris. He collaborates with art institutions in Northwest Arkansas and works with artists on projects through Arts One Presents.  David also works independently, painting and curating shows, as well as participating in group exhibits.

Megan Rose:   Megan is an Arkansas native. Born outside of the River Valley, she later moved to the high desert of central Arizona along the Mingus Mountains, and then, back to the ever-growing NWA area. Throughout her childhood and teenage years, she took classes at Arts One Presents (formerly Arts Center of the Ozarks) and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Here, she found her passion for artistic expression grew exponentially, which pushed her to further her skills and techniques. Creating and cultivating her craft in fine arts at a very young age, she believes in the importance of an artist’s individual lens and their perspective of the world that surrounds us.

She enjoys working primarily with acrylics, gouache, collage, and other mixed media. Her abstract pieces are representative of the many different things that make up who we are - our intrinsic selves, who we are at our core, the people we are inspired by, the books that move us, and the environment that impacts us. Each section of color in her art comes together like a puzzle to exhibit the varying shades of individuality. The fascination with eyes that evoke strong emotion is evident in her paintings, highlighted with vivid, contrasting colors.

Currently, you can find Megan hard at work managing her small business on Etsy, Shop Megan Rose, founded in 2019. She finds a lot of joy working with galleries, art markets, and local shops. Conversing with those who are dedicated to the arts within the community fuels her passion to keep forming new, meaningful work.

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