Malone University's Cayce Wheelock is curator for newly opened Dueber Gallery

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Cayce Wheelock

CANTON , OH (10/24/2012)(readMedia)-- Malone University recently collaborated with The Timken Company to open the Dueber Gallery – a rotating art exhibit in the Dueber Café, located within the Timken corporate headquarters. The inaugural exhibit is titled, Assisi Thin Places, by local artist Michele Waalkes.

Curator for the exhibit is Cayce Wheelock, a senior art and business administration double major from Lisle, New York.

A gallery plaque articulates its purpose. It reads, "The Dueber Café Gallery showcases the talent of our local artists and the beauty within our community. The Timken Company and Malone University work together to make this rotating exhibit possible. To see more inspirational works, visit the art district in Canton to see how our local arts community is bringing our downtown to life."

About the artist:

Michele Waalkes would assert that her most significant artistic growth has occurred primarily in midlife: a contemplative period where her life experiences and creativity have collided. Art has become a meaningful way for her to process and explore the complexities of life in tandem with living it. She earned her B.A. in art in 2007 from Malone University, with emphases in fibers and graphics. Living in Canton, Ohio, with her husband and three children, she is currently the curator at 2nd April Galerie. In addition to curating, she is committed to creating and exhibiting her own artwork, which has been exhibited in various regional and national venues including The Little Art Gallery, North Canton, Ohio, Massillon Museum, Massillon, Ohio, Kent State University Stark, Gallery 6000, North Canton, Ohio, Malone University, Canton, Ohio, Sixth Street Gallery, Vancouver, Wash., and The Washington Gallery of Photography, Bethesda, Maryland. Most recently, she was commissioned to create a large diptych for Mercy Medical Center in Canton, Ohio.

Her work fuses her love of photography, graphics, and fibers into conceptual pieces that utilize her own photography, with a variety of different methods to transfer her images onto both sheer and opaque fabrics. The images on fabric are then layered to create intriguing juxtapositions with visual and conceptual depth. Recurring themes in her work include the transience of life in time, as well as the feelings evoked by diverse natural, cultural, and architectural spaces. Currently, her work can be seen at 2nd April galerie and Anderson Creative. She also has an upcoming group show at the McFadden Gallery at Malone University from Aug. 31- Oct. 5, 2009 and a two person show at The Little Art Gallery, opening Oct. 17- Nov. 15, 2009. Additional works can also be viewed online at: www.michelewaalkes.blogspot.com.

About Assisi Thin Places:

Waalkes served an artist residency in Assisi, Italy in March of this year to take photos for creation of the body of work that visually conveys the essence of this thin place. She describes a thin place is a time, place, or state of being where the divide or veil between heaven and earth, the divine and human, seems to be thinner, more permeable. Experiencing a thin place can foster spiritual awakening.

Waalkes explains, "I am highly intrigued by the deep sense of mystery that surrounds thin places and want to visually portray this in a new mixed media body of work, using my photos as the foundation. My photography will be transposed onto fabric, metal, and other materials that I layer and manipulate to construct ethereal, contemplative imagery that echoes a thin place."

Malone University, a Christian university for the arts, sciences, and professions in the liberal arts tradition, affiliated with the Evangelical Friends Church, awards both undergraduate and graduate degrees in more than 100 academic programs. Malone has been recognized by the prestigious Templeton Foundation as a leader in character development, as one of Northeast Ohio's Top Workplaces by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and is ranked among the top colleges and universities in the Midwest under the category Regional Universities according to U.S. News & World Report's America's Best Colleges 2013.