Mixed media art featured at Red Rock
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FAIRMONT-- Cassandra Labairon of Trimont currently has her work on display at the Red Rock Center for the Arts in Fairmont. Labairon specializes in mixed media art.
In addition to art, Labairon is a poet and an English professor at South Central College in Mankato. She shared that her interest in art began at a young age.
"As a kid my favorite activities were playing with clay, coloring and doing watercolor painting. I was always interested in it," Labairon said.
The interest continued as she got older and Labairon said art classes were some of her favorite in high school. When she went to college, Labairon said she took more art credits than anything else. She ended up graduating with a degree in English, but with so many art credits, she went to graduate school and got a master's in art.
Now, Labairon focuses on art in her free time. She has had it on display several times before.
"Most of my work has been in southern Minnesota but I've had some pieces in shows in New York," Labairon said.
As for how her pieces came to be on display at the Red Rock, Labairon said she reached out to the Red Rock after moving to the area, not necessarily to show her work, but to learn about the organization.
"I'm a big believer in the arts in rural areas. I wanted to know what kind of programming they had or how I could volunteer. I saw they had a call for artists last fall so I applied," Labairon said.
The Red Rock routinely displays artwork by local artists. Red Rock’s Director, Sonja Fortune, said she thinks it’s a good way to connect art with the community. She pointed out that someone doesn’t need to be a professional, career artist in order to show their work.
“There’s a lot of talent in our community and in our area. We should find value in all kinds of different forms of creativity. It’s a way to draw together our community and celebrate all different kinds of art,” Fortune said.
While Labairon does a variety of art, the pieces on display at the Red Rock are abstract mixed media pieces and prints that are made out of photographs of the mixed media pieces. Labairon estimates that she has about 50 on display in total.
"When I was in grad school I got really interested in trying to integrate things like sewing, embroidery or lacework into my paintings and the pieces I was doing," Labairon said.
She works a lot of with color, texture and shadows because her pieces are applied to a board, which creates a shadow affect in the right lighting.
"I've photographed the squares and created a pattern, sort of like you would in a quilt," she said.
As a mixed media artist, Labairon uses a variety of materials, including wood, canvas, paint and fabric like denim or cotton.
"When I first started doing these pieces, I was really interested in reclaiming materials that people didn't want. I started doing them in graduate school. I would take pieces of things that other artists had thrown away and combined them with different paintings I had done," Labairon said.
This is where she came up with he name of her show: Reclaim.
Labairon spoke to the importance of having a place like the Red Rock Center. She shared that she was actually born in the Czech Republic but moved to the U.S. as a baby and grew up in southern Minnesota, near Marshall. She moved to the Trimont area a few years ago after getting married.
"There wasn't a place like this where I grew up. I was always interested in art but there was a hole because the only exposure I had to art was in school--which was wonderful because I had great teachers-- but it would have been great if there had been a center like Red Rock," Labairon said.
There will be an artist meet and greet from 2 to 4 p.m. this Sunday, July 30 at the Red Rock Center for the Arts in Fairmont.
"It's so important for the community to support something like the Red Rock. Even if you don't know that much about art, just stopping in to look at the programming is valuable because you don't know what will spark your interest. It's a fun place; it makes the community more lively," Labairon said.