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By Peter HaynesFeb. 15, 2015, 11:45 p.m.

This exhibition takes the viewer on a seductive journey, travelling with the artist as she confronts and meditates on the powerful beauty that is our country.

Charlie Wells - Forms of Landscape.

Tuggeranong Arts Centre, 137 Reed Street, Greenway. Open weekdays 10am to 7pm, Saturday 10am to 4pm. Until 28 February.

Forms of Landscape is an exhibition about the artist, Charlie Wells's, relationship with and responses to the Australian landscape. The exhibition takes the viewer on a seductive journey, travelling with the artist as she confronts and meditates on the powerful beauty that is our country. Wells ushers the viewer around the light-filled space of the larger of the two upstairs galleries of the Tuggeranong Arts Centre. The installation works particularly well with the mainly "serial" (and logical) hang of the thirty pieces allowing for the quiet contemplation of each work but simultaneously insinuating internal relationships within the various series whilst alluding to the thematic bottom line that gives the overall exhibition meaning as well as aesthetic resonance.

Wells uses a limited, yet very effective palette essentially browns, creams and yellows, the latter sometimes declaratively in an acid tone. The palette is a major ingredient in its contribution to the ambient character of the exhibition. The colours are those of the landscape and Wells invests them with a soft and intimate tone that is at once personal to her and quietly conveys her emotional attachment to places visited and loved. She makes (relatively) small works that demand close visual inspection and consequent aesthetic engagement. The poetry of intimate confrontation is beautifully celebrated in Forms of Landscape.

The four works from the "Paddock' series begin the viewer's journey. The title of each "Paddock" is related to a centrally placed coloured rectangle "Yellow Paddock", "Red Paddock", "Green Paddock", "Ochre Paddock". These coloured motifs sit or indeed "float" above fields of lines or (lines of) dots. Each work has thirteen lines, neatly horizontal and clearly evocative of an epistolary format, but here perhaps nature's scripts are transposed to the artist's pictorial vocabulary. Wells's use of repetition is embracingly seductive. The abstract marks or dots in each line evoke aspects of topography. Their overt individualisation secures posts of memory for the artist but posits possibilities for varying interpretations for each viewer.

Formally the central motif contains the slow lateral pull of the linear background. The serial character of the sets of 13 lines underscores the entire exhibition in that it infers the continuity of transactions with nature. While each line is confined to the width of the paper on which it sits, the "possibilities" for eastward extension are always present. Wells however holds this with the floating density of the various centralised rectangles.

The works in the "Landscape Remembered" series are subtly layered conveyors of memories. They continue the warmth of emotional attachment to places seen and loved. In most of the exhibition "place" is not specified. In "Burnt Hill Mullagalah" the nominal title is irrelevant. The landscape becomes a misty evocation of the bush after fire, an allusion to the drama inherent in the cycles of nature. The Fred Williamesque tripartite division of the picture plane is overlaid by, once again, floating motifs (here, leaves) that provide formal spatial depth and illustrations from the natural world. The elision of the natural with the abstract imparts formal and pictorial tension and underscores the artist's insertion of her highly developed aesthetic understanding of her chosen subject-matter.

Wells's making literally embraces the world she pictorializes. Process is intimately entwined with content and is integral to the way Wells visually manifests her philosophical and aesthetic understanding of where she is. Actual physical elements from the places she visualises are embedded into the paper or activate the canvases, literally referencing the landscape she so poetically translates. While this procedural encompassing mostly works, in some instances (eg "Reflections on Dam II" or "Transience") its literalness, its blaring actuality, is arguably best omitted. Suggestion is often a more compelling device than reality.

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Charlie Wells and Forms of Landscape

COLUMBIA, S.C. South Carolina voters often think of themselves as presidential tie-breakers, enjoying their prime role as the next to cast ballots after Iowa's caucuses and New Hampshire's primary.

But what if there's a ringer in the race?

The state's senior senator, Republican Lindsey Graham, is flirting with running for president, an idea some initially saw as so unlikely that many thought his longtime Senate buddy John McCain was joking when he mentioned it the first time.

Graham is serious, launching a campaign-like organization and starting to lay the groundwork for a bid. He gave a well-received speech to the influential Republican Jewish Coalition last week in Washington. Next week, he is scheduled to visit California to meet with donors and then head to Iowa.

His potential entry into the race has put his state's political talent into a holding pattern. As they wait for Graham to decide whether to run in a state carried by every GOP nominee since 1980, with Mitt Romney's loss to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 2012 the lone exception, they're debating among themselves whether he can or should mount a national campaign.

"Everything's kind of frozen here right now, waiting to see what he'll do," said Warren Tompkins, a longtime Republican operative who ran South Carolina campaigns for President George W. Bush and Romney in 2012.

Added Tompkins' sometimes adversary, Richard Quinn, who ran McCain's 2000 campaign in the state: "I've been with (Graham) since he ran for Congress in '93, and whatever Lindsey does this cycle, I'll be in his corner."

Such loyalty shouldn't be viewed as a harbinger of Graham coasting to an easy win in South Carolina, however. Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack was one of the first candidates to enter and then leave the 2008 campaign, and Romney, who owns a vacation home in New Hampshire, came up short that same year in his adopted state's primary.

South Carolina is deeply conservative in the "upstate" around Greenville and Spartanburg, less so near the state capital of Columbia, with a coastline that's home to thousands of retirees and members of the military who have moved from elsewhere, bringing their brand of GOP politics with them.

"When you come to South Carolina and win, it means you've checked off all the boxes: social conservative, fiscal conservative, strong defense, all of it," said Katon Dawson, a former state party chairman who backs former Texas Gov. Rick Perry in 2016.

Originally posted here:
Graham's consideration of 2016 upends SC landscape

BRATTLEBORO >> The Harris Hill Ski Jump has been growing, changing and evolving from the very first year it opened way back in 1922.

Construction on the steep hillside that rises off of Cedar Street started the year before when Fred Harris and a small crew of workers set out with hand tools and planks of wood to build a ski jump where athletes could launch out above the winter landscape.

Those ski jumpers used wooden skis with leather bindings, and they kept warm with thick and heavy wool pants and sweaters, bearing very little resemblance to the high-tech, aerodynamic jumpers of today.

The facility, and the sport, have come a long way in the past 93 years.

"My father was born in 1887 and I think he would fall over if he saw all this new technology and the improvements and changes," Fred Harris' daughter Sandy Harris said. "In his heart he would be overjoyed and amazed to think that this is still going on, and that his vision of over 90 years ago is still going strong in his birth place and community."

The gates will open for 2015 Harris Hill Ski Jumping Competition at 10 a.m., Saturday, Feb. 14, with the first trial jumpers launching at 11 a.m. and opening ceremonies scheduled for 12:15 p.m.

Over the next two days some of the best ski jumpers in the world will compete in the International Ski Federation sanctioned event.

Over the past 93 years the facility has seen constant upgrades as the sport has demanded more from the jumpers.

Fred Harris, a native of Brattleboro, helped build the first jump at a cost of $2,200. It opened in 1922 and by 1924 improvements were made to the jump to improve the structure.

Dana Sprague, a local historian who has been documenting the advancements at Harris Hill, said the structure required almost constant upgrades, and he said Fred Harris was the perfect leader who poured his heart and soul into making sure the ski jump was ready to go for the annual competition.

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Always reaching further

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) South Carolina voters often think of themselves as presidential tie-breakers, enjoying their prime role as the next to cast ballots after Iowa's caucuses and New Hampshire's primary.