Cadmium River Group, Cat Ranch Art Guild combine talents for art show at Global Cafe

The Cadmium River Group, a local artist organization, will make room for others this month as it features a joint show with members of the Cat Ranch Art Guild.

Randy Hays, coordinator of the Cadmium River Group, heard the Cat Ranch Art Guild was looking for another location to hold gallery exhibitions, so he asked the group to show alongside Cadmium artists indefinitely at its gallery at the Global Cafe on Broadway.

On Saturday, the Global Cafe Spring Art Exhibit featuring 20 Cadmium and Cat Ranch members will open to the public with a buffet reception. The show will feature a variety of mediums, including sculpture, traditional and modern painting, and photography. Some art and prints will be available for sale.

Jeanie Eddleman, president of the Cat Ranch, said Hays offered the members an opportunity to come into the gallery when Westray Studio on Broadway, where the guild has always held its exhibitions, closed its doors to look for a different location. Eddleman is also the operations manager of Westray Studio.

Hays said he was looking for a place to show his own artwork several years ago, but there was no place in town that would work with him except for the Westray Studio and the Cat Ranch.

"They were always so helpful to me," Hays said.

Hays said Cadmium aims to inspire budding artists and give them a place to display their work and to motivate them to develop their talent. Hays said the group includes artists who also belong to the local Visual Arts Co-op, Cat Ranch and from art guilds in Paducah, Ky., and Effingham, Ill.

"We also have people who exhibit nowhere else," he said.

The exhibitions hosted by the Global Cafe stay on display for three months. In the show opening Saturday, Hays said the work by artists from the Cat Ranch Art Guild will be featured in its own room, and in another room of the gallery will be a "jungle room," with tiger stripes on the walls, vines on the ceilings and more of a 1970s psychedelic theme.

Melissa Whitaker, a new artist to Cadmium, said she likes the variety of artwork shown by the group. She described her work applying acrylic and oil painting to older photographs as surrealistic.

"Randy started a really great thing where local artists can display without too much judgment," she said.

Whitaker joined the group in June after taking time off from art to raise a family, she said. As a real estate stager, she often creates art for homes she is helping to sell.

"I have sold some artwork through my staging," she said. "People will see it and want to buy it to go with the house."

She has two pieces in the show, one of which is a photograph of her mother and grandmother in a rowboat, called "Undercurrent." The other piece, called "Circling back to Kansas," is an aerial photograph she took of crop circles and then added her own twist with paint.

Hays said he wouldn't be able to hold the shows without the help of the Global Cafe's owners, Jerel and Belen Lichtenegger.

"They are wonderful patrons of the arts, who have given me full [authority] to do what I need to do in order to make it a place where art can be displayed," Hays said.

The cost to attend the banquet is $10 per person, which goes directly toward covering the restaurant's expenses.

Reservations for the banquet for artists and their guests are available at 5 p.m. and community reservations are available at 6, 7 and 8 p.m., and can be made by calling the Global Cafe at 334-7955.