The Arkansas Capital Corporation Group (ACCG) is dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs throughout Arkansas succeed. Arkansas artists are certainly entrepreneurs. In 2013, ACCG began showcasing the work of Arkansas artists in our offices and began hosting open houses open to the public to help support the artists, as well as provide our community of staff, clients and visitors with a chance to be inspired by the art and be able to network at our offices as part of downtown Little Rock’s 2nd Friday Art Night. We are continuing that successful public-artist venture with the May 8th Friday Art Night with works by Diane Harper, Dominique Simmons and Barbara Satterfield in a show titled “Southern Curiosities”. Robert Bean is the show curator. Whether you are interested in learning more about the many lending products or just need a little visual inspiration, please stop by our offices Friday, May 8 from 5-8 p.m. Light hors d’oeuvres and drinks will be served. The artists will all be at the event to discuss their work, and all work is for sale with proceeds directly benefiting the artist. Our offices are located at 200 River Market, Avenue, Suite 400, Little Rock, AR 72201. Two nearby parking decks, as well as street parking are available. We are at Trolley Stop 10. Additional details about the trolley are available here.

About the Artists 

Diane Harper

Artist Statement

For years I felt awkward when people asked me, “Where are you from?” My artwork explores answers to this question. I grew up an army brat without a sense of where “home” was. My family moved back and forth to army posts in the USA and Germany. My mother was from France, and I spent a lot of time in her parents’ home in Luxembourg. To answer the question, I look to my father’s old maps of the places we’ve lived and visited to piece together a sense of place. I look to old European fairy tales, family stories and personal memories to develop a sense of connection to the past, with old family photographs, books, postcards, flags and other ephemera providing visual references. The use of abstract painting reflects my affinity for the energy of the painting process – the fast decisions, accidents, and gestures made by scraping, dripping, splattering, brushing, scrubbing and spraying of paint on canvas. This reliance on chance bypasses analytical thought and allows greater access to a more intuitive process. Images and ideas emerge as I work the layers. The surfaces appear as topographical maps or aerial views from our many airline travels. Red White Blue, Bleu Blanc Rouge refers to the dual cultures of my Franco-American household and the flags representing each country. The text woven in the background of the triptych is taken from my writings about the central question, “Where are you from?” Where are YOU from?

Artist Bio

Diane Harper’s (b. 1962, Palm Springs) childhood was one of a nomadic Military dependent. She lived amidst the shadow of the Cold War of the 60’s and 70’s in Europe and the US. Growing up with her French mother added a layer of richness to her perspective and worldview. Her early years fostered a fascination with maps, flags, different cultures, WWII, European fairy tales, and all things French. Following her accomplishment as a career social worker, Harper pursued her creative passion and obtained a degree in art. She then established herself as a nexus for various innovative art projects including forming the Arkansas Society of Printmakers and organizing a weekly breakfast where artists meet to discuss and collaborate on art and art business. Some of her favorite things to do include linking artists, fostering creative collaborations, and formulating ways to exhibit art in both traditional and nontraditional venues. She lives with her husband Jim in Little Rock, Arkansas. Her paintings, mixed media, and fine art prints can be seen at Gallery 26 in Little Rock and in private collections.

Dominique Simmons

Artist Statement

This work reflects a life lived, experiences distilled and filtered through the layers of personal memory, unquenchable curiosity and hard-won artistic skills These pieces are not stories with a beginning, middle or end. If they do tell a story it is of the viewers making. They are not morality plays and I have no interest in proselytizing. They are not about a particular place or time but about all times and all places for I am not interested in nostalgia. Chaos is my muse. I give a nod to chaos because my work is about making sense of my particularly chaotic corner of the universe. My tools are the principles of design and those particular mediums (encaustic ,graphite, wood, etc.) that satisfy my urge to experiment and also serve the formal needs of the work. My life and times,the places where I live[ed], filtered through memories become the uncontrollable, intangible and smoky substance found in spirituality and faith. These intangibles infuse my work and find form and content through the principles of design and an understanding of and sensitivity to the medium.

Artist Bio

Dominique Simmons first found form in Fayetteville and Fort Smith, Arkansas. She has resided in Little Rock for the past thirty years, where she instructed both at the Arkansas Arts Center and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She is a recipient of an Arkansas Arts Council fellowship, has been represented multiple times in the Arkansas Arts Center Delta Competitive, The Arkansas Arts Council Small Works On Paper, and numerous solo and group shows. Her work also resides in many private collections and local galleries. Currently she is a peer facilitator for the Argenta Arts Foundation in their Artist Inc. program, a professional development class for artists, a founding member of the Arkansas Society of Printmakers, a member of the Quapaw Quarter Figure Drawing Group and the Mugs Bunch, an artist support peer group. She is represented by Gallery 26 in Little Rock and currently has work in a printmaking show at the Arkansas Studies Institute’s Butler Center Galleries. She is represented in a self portrait show at Mug’s Cafe in Argenta (downtown North Little Rock) and has a retrospective of her work at the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith.

Barbara Satterfield

Artist Statement

A life-long fascination with objects found in nature and my love of vessels melds with my professional interest in museum exhibitions in this Found Object Sculpture Series. It affords me the opportunity to present selected items for unique contemplation by virtue of their placement on vessels or forms that honor the objects’ inherent line, form, and implied mass. The pieces in this series serve as mounts for curiosities I have collected over the years: pods & galls, nests, echinoderm & shells, rocks & dirt, and insect exoskeletons. By collaborating with nature to explore ideas and create content, rather than making images “of ” or “about” nature, I continue this series as an homage to often-unexamined things, metaphorical thinking, and the exploration of ceramic as a fine-art medium.

Artist Bio

Barbara Satterfield’s career in the arts spans 40 years in Conway and includes teaching creative dramatics for its first community arts association, working in public schools through the Artist-in-Education program of the Arkansas Arts Council, founding and directing a non-profit children’s arts program (The Art Station), and serving as Director of the Baum Gallery of Fine Art at the University of Central Arkansas and Lecturer for the UCA Department of Art in Conway, Arkansas. Since retirement, Satterfield has reconnected with studio production and produced two series of ceramic work. Her figurative series, And then, I: Monuments to Pivotal Moments, is currently touring public spaces in Arkansas towns with assistance from a grant award sponsored by the Mid-America Arts Alliance. Her vessels in the Found Object Sculpture Series have been selected for competitive exhibition, garnered awards, and been privately collected. Satterfield has utilized her ten years of professional museum experience by creating BarbaraB: Exhibit Development and Design, a consulting business to assist artists and organizations with project visioning, exhibit and grant writing, programming, and project management. She is responsible for organizing the two-year tour of Arkansas Champion Trees: An Artist’s Journey, Drawings by Linda Williams Palmer for travel, for authoring its state and private grant funding, for creating the content for the exhibit materials and website, and for visioning and managing the educational outreach component “Growing Champion Classrooms.” Satterfield is a Fellow of Artist Inc, Argenta, and her arts community service includes executive board membership on the Arkansas Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Committee of One Hundred to Benefit the Ozark Folk Center State Park, and a board membership with the Thea Foundation.

About the Curator

Robert Bean

Robert Bean

Robert Bean grew up in central Arkansas admiring the pulpy pages of comic books, learning to draw from the inspiration he found in those yellowing narratives. Taking that early inspiration, Bean honed his skills as an artist in the wonderfully grungy studios of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. It was there that he found a way to combine his love of the story with his love of painting and drawing. Having spent the past 15 years telling his brand of visual stories, Bean has built a career of exhibitions that range from regional to national in scope. He still resides in Little Rock with his wife Maria, keeping his pencil to the drawing board and telling his brand of visual narratives.     2nd Friday Art Night is a time once-a-month when galleries, museums and businesses in downtown Little Rock are open from 5-8 p.m. for an after-hours gallery walk.