by Christy Rodriguez de Conte

In celebration of Tallahassee’s Bicentennial, the Council on Culture & Arts will highlight a specific artist or organization each month that is the epitome of artistic ambition in our capital city. The spotlight on Terrie Corbett & the Creative Tallahassee exhibition is the Artistic Ambition spotlight for March.

Multitalented artist Terrie Corbett advocates for the Tallahassee arts community by serving as an art juror and sharing her art-making knowledge and joy with the world. 

Corbett served as the exhibition juror for this year’s Creative Tallahassee: the Tallahassee Bicentennial exhibit, featuring over 50 individual artworks never before shown at the City Hall Art Gallery. An Opening Reception & Awards Ceremony for the exhibit is set for Thursday, April 11.

The stars of an art exhibit are, rightfully so, the artists. From the second you enter a gallery, your eye is drawn to the artwork hanging on the wall or placed on the pedestals. As you move from piece to piece, you experience a nice flow through the space as you investigate each image with ease and purpose.

You notice descriptive narratives by some works and award ribbons by others. Exhibition curators and jurors from across the country smile as they read this, knowing their critical role in building an experience that honors the artists, showcases the art, and guides the viewer’s eye through the space. They are the unsung heroes of the art world.

With multiple exhibition showings across the region and a lifetime of artmaking and education under her belt, artist Corbett gives a glimpse at how art curators and jurors approach their work. For Corbett, art curation is all about preparation. Before ever stepping foot into the exhibition space, a curator must be able to identify artists of interest, create a proposal for their work, select a space, communicate with artists and galleries, and map out the logistics from parking to hanging paintings.

“Being prepared to put a show together and all that that entails is necessary when curating an exhibition. When an unexpected opportunity presents itself, you have to be ready to pull together a proposal and select the artists fairly quickly,” says Corbett. 

These skills, combined with Corbett’s art history, technique, and process knowledge, make her an asset as a juror for this year’s Creative Tallahassee exhibition. Though admittedly subjective, Corbett describes her role as a juror as discovering innovative, skillful work derived from this year’s theme for Creative Tallahassee: the Tallahassee Bicentennial.

“Most importantly, it must excite or move you in some way through composition, design, color, value, expression, or technique.”

Corbett approaches every show she juries with an open mind and an intrigued eye, traits she has carried into her own artwork. “I do not take the position that ‘this is the way you paint a tree, a landscape, a figure,’ “ Corbett said. “Art history (shows] the variety of ways that those subjects have been expressed. I am interested in the way the subjects are interpreted by the artist – whether it is realistic or abstracted or somewhere in between.” 

Read more on the Tallahassee Democrat.