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Dig in to brightly colored art
Exhibit at Gainesville State College invites viewers to participate
0917Lollipop1
"Oh!" by Carol John.

‘Lollipop, Lollipop’
A colorful art exhibit

When:  9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday through Sept. 24; reception, noon Sept. 24
Where: Roy C. Moore Art Gallery, Gainesville State College, 3820 Mundy Mill Road, Oakwood
How much: Free
More info: 678-717-3707

Don’t touch!

That’s what you might usually hear at fine art galleries, but at “Lollipop, Lollipop,” a candy-colored art exhibit on view at Gainesville State College’s Roy C. Moore Art Gallery, you can touch and even take a ride on some of the pieces.

Sculptor Didi Dunphy designed striped skateboards for the exhibit, which will be on display through Sept. 24. The boards represent one of the goals of the show: To make the gallery approachable and “friendly” to the art-shy.

“It’s a really user-friendly show,” said Beth Sale, the gallery director at GSC. “It breaks from the boundaries that I think galleries typically have.”

Sale said an art education class recently viewed the exhibit and had a ball skating around the gallery and playing on another Dunphy work, a 12-foot seesaw.

“I hope this gets the student body (and the public) used to coming into the gallery and using the space,” she said.

Dunphy, Carol John and Lou Kregel comprise Athens Design Development, an Athens-based collaborative that also does murals and other public art in the city. Sale said the artists have “a very colorful, vibrant approach to art-making.”

Sale said John creates “very bright, bold, colorful works” that some people think of as “very large doodles.”

Circles, tear drops, rainbows and splashes of color crowd the canvas of “OH!,” one of John’s works in the exhibit.

John layers the whimsical elements to make a colorful field of patterns that Sale said are “made very important by the size.”

Sale said Kregel, a textile designer, weaves color into her works in surprising ways, using tones that might not typically go together.

“She develops a pattern and then she plays around with a color,” said Sale. “It really pushes the colors to see what kind of reaction she can get from the viewer or what kind of world she can make just by color combinations.”

The artists will attend the closing reception for the show, which will be at noon Sept. 24 at the gallery. Sale said in keeping with the show’s theme there will be “sweets and fun stuff to eat.”