The guild’s regular meetings aim to connect artists to other artists.
Stephen Finn
The Sun
The Burlington County Art Guild began in 1966 with Mount Holly artists Robert Ransley and Gisela J. Bly. According to the guild’s website, the two shared a mutual desire to form an art guild that would increase awareness of the visual arts.
Through their partnership the BCAG was born. Today the community-based volunteer organization has grown to approximately 150 artist members based in and around Burlington County.
“Our main mission is to help artists connect with other artists,” said past president and current board member Pam Levin.
The guild has partnered with the Burlington County Library where they hold artist workshops about once a month. According to Levin, these workshops usually feature prominent artists who present examples of their work and demonstrate a particular technique.
Levin sees Burlington County as a “pretty good” place for artists. In addition to the library, the guild utilizes a number of venues throughout the area, including the David Flinker Gallery at the Virtua Hospital in Mount Holly, the Lyceum Hall Center for the Arts in Burlington City and the Palmyra Cove Nature Park.
“It’s really good for artists for networking, but it’s also good for the community to know that there are people out there that are doing something creative and they can see it at different venues,” said Levin.
On Tuesday, March 19, the guild hosted multimedia artist Colleen Rudolf for one of its workshops at the library. Rudolf is a working artist based in Philadelphia and a teacher at Rowan College at Burlington County.
She works with an array of mediums, but her presentation to the guild centered around techniques utilizing charcoal.
Rudolf grew up in New York and credits two of her neighbors for opening her up to the arts at a young age.
“That was important because my own parents weren’t really as familiar with the art world. I just remember both those neighbors being very supportive and important for me discovering it was possible to have a life around the arts,” recalled Rudolf.
It wasn’t until she attended Skidmore College, an independent liberal arts school in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., that she began to find her artistic voice
“They had a pretty rigorous art program, so once I got on that track I was like ‘Oh my gosh, this is amazing,’” said Rudolf. “I tried to explore all the different mediums, but I found myself most excited by sculpture.”
Despite living most of her life in major cities, much of Rudolf’s work centers around nature, landscapes and animals.
“It’s ironic, I guess, that I grew up in a city and I still live in a city, but I think that’s maybe also why. As we live in these more dense environments and species diversity is decreasing and humans are sort of taking over, I think the question of how we exist within the larger framework of this earth become a bigger question,” said Rudolf.
Much of Rudolf’s work explores this question and our relationship with nature. A piece she is particularly excited about is a life-sized sculpture of a chimpanzee she is hoping to incorporate projection and video into.
According to Rudolf, she wants to take the work beyond just a depiction of the creature itself.
“What’s really interesting to me is our relationship to these other things and how we meet them and share this place,” said Rudolf.
For more information about the Burlington County Art Guild, visit its website at burlcoartguild.org.
To see examples of Rudolf’s work, you can visit her website at colleenrudolf.com.
