AZULE BOARD Summer 2010
Camille.H.Shafer moved with her husband Dave Shafer to Bluff, next to Hot springs NC in 1972. Born in France she studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, taught arts in Quebec and was an occupational therapist at Toledo Hospital. She considers Madison County her adoptive Appalachian country and culture. She is a builder and a visual artist with a portfolio of extraordinary quilts. She cares and strives for inclusion (disability, class, race, gender, age, religion). Board member since 1994
Selinde Lanier earned her M.F.A. in Fibers from Savannah College of Art and Design, exploring the structural and fiber content possibilities of getting light through woven fabric. She worked professionally for the furniture industry as a textile designer until 2004 and has recently set up a studio in the Marshall High Studios building, in Marshall, NC. Currently, she is developing a line of hand-woven Appalachian-styled coverlets, using yarn dyed exclusively with natural plant dyes native to the region. For images and more information visit http://www.selindelanier.blogspot.com/ Board member since 2009
Lynda Wheelock has lived and worked in Spring Creek NC for over 28 years. She retired in 2006 from Headstart, after teaching for 21 years. She now pursues full time her old passion for drawing and painting. As a friend of Camille Shafer and the wife of Doug Wheelock, the steadiest carpenter and builder of Azule, she has watched the progress of the site for over two decades. Board member since 2007
Bunny Halton-Subkis has been the Director of UNC Asheville Office of Cultural & Special Events and a program chair in UNC Asheville Academic Affairs for 11 years. Prior to this position she was Assistant Director of the performing Art Series at UNC and she has worked in marketing and advertising for the retail music business as well as being a performer in Western North Carolina. She has a BA in Theatre and Mass Communications from the University of South Florida. She serves as western region Member-at-Large for the NC Presenters Consortium, and on the Advisory Boards of Black Mountain College Museum + Art Center and the Performance Center of Asheville. Board member since 1994
Gwylene Gallimard and Jean-Marie Mauclet's collaborative experiences include two French cafes (one is now 26 year old in Charleston SC), art installations about health insurance, the fast food phenomenon, religious beliefs. They have been the lead artists of multi year programs like "My Journey Yours" with Refugee Family Services, and "The Future is on the Table". Their last installation deals with Olympia, cotton mills and villages in Columbia, SC. Awards in the States include grants from the NEA, the SC Arts Commission, Spoleto Festival USA and Alternate ROOTS. Mauclet is also a contemporary furniture maker. He holds a BA in Political Science and an MFA from SUNY. He also studied at the Cooper Union in NY. Gallimard holds a MFA in Media Arts from Concordia U. (Montreal) and one from ENSAD (Paris, France). They have lived in Charleston since 1984.
Peggy Gardner is currently the office manager for the Preservation Society of Asheville and Buncombe County. A native of Asheville, her interest is in photographic and local history. Over the past ten years, she has worked with archival collections at Pack Memorial Library, the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, the Swannanoa Valley Museum, and the SC Library. Before that she provided photographic, design and publishing services for non-profit organizations, educational and historical institutions. Peggy considers her life enriched by her many French friends, and this led to her connection with Azule. They have been an antidote to the trauma she suffered in the eleventh grade, when she had to sing La Marseillaise solo in front of her French class in order to receive a passing grade. Board member since 1994
Olivier Rollin was born in France where he studied industrial design and worked there several years as a designer. In the US since 1980, he has been a self employed designer working on projects including: industrial design, lamp and furniture making, remodeling of buildings and technical illustrations.
Board member since 1994
Harold Finley was a farmer and is now a landscaper, grading contractor and community developer. He has been a life long resident of Bluff community. Married in 1974 with Sadie Thomas, he has three children and one grand child. He has worked with Camille and Dave Shafer on the grounds of Azule for twenty five years. His work is his hobby. Board member since 1994
Eleanor Brownfield - I am a native Atlantan reared in Alabama, educated in Tennessee and Pennsylvania. On my 9th birthday, Miss Rosa changed our world and because I knew she was right, I have been an activist ever since. Along the way, I have been devoted to many forms of art, exercising my passion for theater, dance and music, chiefly as a stage manager, performer, writer and critic (notably with the Sisters of No Mercy, Company Kaye Dance/Mime, the DeLuxe Vaudeville Orchestra and Beacon Dance). Since 1982, I have explored the intersections of art and activism as a member of Alternate ROOTS. From childhood paper dolls and hand-sewn clothes to professional work as a theatrical costumer, I have always been fascinated with design and fiber arts. I have been an organic gardener since the early seventies and kept cats all along. Connection with the natural world is the anchor of my life. Board member since 2010
Betsy Reiser moved to the Western North Carolina Mountains with her artist husband, young son, and two dogs in the mid-70's from Miami, Florida. They lived in the country pursuing their interests in gardening, art, music, health and natural foods. Remodeling a building in downtown Asheville for a natural foods café led to other real estate projects, and eventually Betsy found herself an executive as the owner and broker-in-charge of a small real estate company. As a self-proclaimed "house voyeur", it turns out that this was a pretty good career path. Betsy believes that Camille Shafer's incredible creation in Spring Creek, which now houses AZULE, is one of the most interesting, inspiring, and organic structures she has seen in her long career of house viewing. Board member since 1994
Cecilia Rawlins was born in Rocky Mount, NC, attended high school in West Virginia and returned to North Carolina for college, graduate school, work and family. As an elementary principal in the Wake County Public School System in Raleigh, Cecilia had the opportunity for much community involvement. This included membership on various nonprofit boards: The Visual Art Exchange, Arts Together, Montessori of Raleigh, NC Natural Science Museum, Opera Company of North Carolina, SAFEChild, United Arts Council, Wake County P.T.A. Council and NC State Friends of the College. She has served on an educational advisory committee to the North Carolina State Museum of Art. Cecilia is the mother of Ashley Lindsey, a dancer with The Jose Limon Dance Company in New York. Cecilia is a proud resident of Hot Springs. Board member since 2009
Dave Penrose came to North Carolina from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. He has lived in North Carolina for over 30 years and has made innumerable contributions to the state in the areas of biology and stream restoration. Those contributions were recognized upon his retirement in 2008 when Governor Mike Easley bestowed upon him The Order of the Longleaf Pine, the highest honor to be given to a private citizen in the state of North Carolina. He continues to contribute to the field of science by making presentations around the country, serving as a consultant in the area of stream restoration and keeping a close eye on his beloved streams by fly-fishing whenever and wherever possible. Dave is the father of Kristen Macon, an Adoption Specialist with The Wake County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. As a life long arts enthusiast and collector of local art, and new resident of Madison County, Dave is proud to serve the community through his affiliation with Azule. Board member since 2009
Laird Lanier is a 1987 graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from NC State University. Laird is an artist and engineer who builds mobiles inspired by the work of Alexander Calder and provides production engineering services to the Gulf of Mexico shipbuilding industry. "The tools I use as an engineer have grown directly from my sculpture explorations. When we pick up a 50 ton barge section I use the same tools to find the gravity center and angle of rotation that I do to build a mobile. I first unrolled plates to build big art...this gave me the confidence to unroll plates for ship construction. My creativity is, in no small way, a result of visiting with Dave and Camille as a child and being exposed to creativity as a way of life vs. a singular activity. I draw on that creativity every day whether I am laying out bilge plates or balancing sculptures.
Board member since 2010
Christopher Jayne is a landscape architect and botanist. He has been raised in Sandy Mush, Madison County, where his parents have a very special Herb Nursery. Board member since 2009
Lorrie Jayne is an instructor at Warren Wilson College where she teaches language and cultural understanding in the Departments of undergraduate Writing and Modern Languages. From the time that she was a child growing up on the US Mexico Border, Lorrie has been interested in the space that occurs between cultures and has adhered to the idea that we come together in our similarities but know one another through our differences. Lorrie earned her Masters Degree in Teaching at The School for International Training in Brattleboro,Vermont. She is currently conducting her Doctoral research in the estuary region of Brazilian Amazonia where she is gathering the memoirs of traditional plant healers. Lorrie lives with her husband, Christopher, and daughters, Miriam and Lillian in Swannanao, NC.
DH Cooper received her MFA from The School of the Art Institute in Chicago. Upon graduating in 2005 she received an MFA fellowship award for her video thesis project. During and after her graduate studies her exclusive use of still images expanded to incorporate performance, video, and fiber arts. This shift opened a new venue for her explorations into the domestic arena.
Her works have been featured in numerous exhibitions, some of which have been at the Chicago Cultural Center, The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago, The New Orleans Museum of Art, Time and Space Limited, Hudson NY, and The FAC Modern in Colorado.
Cooper moved to Charleston in 2006 to serve as Creative Strategist and In House Coordinator for "Evoking History/ Places with a Future," a project through Spoleto Festival USA. Currently she pursues her art career and teaches photography full time at the Art Institute of Charleston.
