Published: July 03, 2008 09:45 am            

Music, art come together

Wearable art among Hall’s creations

ASHLAND — Some of Angy Hall’s newest creations brings together her passions and inspirations: music, art, fashion and nature.

For sale at the Pendleton Art Center, Hall offers wearable art — painted jean jackets, one with a portrait of Eric Clapton on the back and another bearing the likeness of Jimi Hendrix. All her wearable art is one of a kind.

She also creates stationery products with musicians’ images and purses with designs that appeal to her, among other items.

Like most artists, Hall’s interest in music and art goes back to childhood, where she couldn’t get enough opportunities to create.

“All my life I’ve been doing visual arts,” she said. “I have always been a visual person.”

Growing up in a military family, Hall said the family was always relocating and having new experiences.

“We were about to leave Germany and wherever you lived had to pass inspection before you could leave,” she said. “I had drawn on the floor. I thought I had one of those waxy, erasable pencils but I had the other kind. I was so afraid I would cause us to fail, so I scrubbed and tried my best to clean it up.”

She said although she didn’t get her creation completely cleaned from the floor, the family did pass inspection and was able to move.

She also loved music, singing in choirs as she grew up, and at one time she wanted to study opera at Julliard.

“My senior choir director told me to forget Julliard,” she recalled. “I could sing and read music but I couldn’t play and read music.”

Still, she had an interest in art.

“Sometimes when we were moving my two brothers would go ahead and I was alone (the only child at home for a time),” she said. “I would entertain myself with art.”

Discouraged from trying a career in music, Hall applied to art schools and was accepted at three — in Pittsburgh, Fort Lauderdale and Denver. She chose Denver.

“I wanted to go someplace different and I hadn’t lived in the West,” she said.

Hall completed her degree in visual communications at Colorado Institute of Art, which required her to be exposed to the widest possible variety of media, including fine art, air brushing and photography.

“I’m a multitasker,” she said, noting the variety in her degree worked for her. “I need constant challenges and something different, something new all the time. I also got to do things I’d never done before and helped me choose what I wanted to do.”

After she graduated in 1992, she lived in Omaha, Neb., for a while but didn’t enjoy the cold climate, the flat lay of the land or the atmosphere in general. She also longed to be closer to her grandparents, who owned a horse farm in Coal Grove.

“We visited them in the summers as much as possible,” she said. “We’d say, ‘we’re going to spend a couple of weeks in the country.’”

She decided to move to the Tri-State, hoping she would be able to find a job in her field.

She quickly joined the staff at Aegina Press as art director, where she worked in design for two years.

Then, music called to her again. She started playing music and soon found she could make a living as a full-time musician and a freelance artist, an arrangement that suited her very well.

However, at 25, a serious car accident sent her into rehabilitation for two years, taking her away from music and leaving her with doubts she’d ever be able to be on stage again.

But she has recovered and, as usual, keeps her hand in where music and art are concerned.

In addition to her studio at the Pendleton, she also works for Stephanie Clark Photography as Clark’s personal assistant and as a studio manager.

“I enjoy it, I really do,” she said.

Although she isn’t currently in a band, she doesn’t miss opportunities to jam with her many musician friends.

Although not a native of Ashland, Hall said she feels this area is home.

“I was a military kid,” she said. Her father was in the Air Force and the family moved frequently and lived in many different places.”“My granddad lived in Coal Grove and had a horse farm there,” she said..’”

She also loves the atmosphere at the Pendleton.

“I’m just like a sponge here,” she said. “Being here has an art school feel to it, being around other artists and sharing ideas and giving and getting feedback, and there’s a constant newness, there’s something new and something changing all the time.”

Hall’s artwork is at her studio in the Pendleton and at Newport on the Levee.



The Pendleton Art Center on Winchester Avenue in Ashland is open from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on weekdays and during First Friday activities from 5 to 8 p.m. and the following Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and by appointment with the artist. To contact Angy Hall, call (606) 325-7653.

LEE WARD can be reached at lward@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2661.

        

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