Waynesboro’s Ray Abraham Yoder: Art Educator with a Mission

Curated by the Augusta County Historical Society

May 23-August 18, 2024

Opening Reception - June 3, 2024, 5-7pm

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Ray Abraham Yoder taught art and oversaw the art curriculum in the Waynesboro schools for 30 years, (1945-1975. He made art education his life-long mission. Even after retirement, his passion for bringing art to people of all ages continued for the rest of his life through painting workshops and his famous “painting vacations” where he took students into the woods and fields and showed them how to capture on canvas what they saw around them.

In addition to his art, there will be interpretive panels about his life. Yoder was originally from Indiana. He came to Waynesboro just after WWII where he worked and lived for the rest of his life.

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Featuring works by artist Elisabeth Fitzhugh

August 26 - November 17, 2024

Opening Reception - August 26, 2024, 5-7pm

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Elisabeth creates colorful and detailed collages using regional and cultural imagery.

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From the artist:

I have spent much of my artist life in three dimensions, altering and working in clay and mixed-media assemblage, but always on my palette was collage. Some years ago, I downsized to an apartment with limited space. This change in my physical environment led to focusing on collage, primarily using digital images – found, scanned, created and altered – as my main medium.

Collage is an ‘assemblage’; gathering images, altering them, amplifying them. The overall image begins to emerge; additional elements are added, overlays, design elements and so on, until the piece becomes a cohesive whole to me.  

My vast collection of images is always worth a stroll through for inspiration of the next collage, for the perfect element of a collage I am working on, for the addition of texture, line or splash of color. Key figures or elements are extracted from a photograph. Colors can be amplified and altered. Size and proportions can change. It’s a changing landscape of exploration available at my fingertips.

When traveling, I began what I now refer to as my Regional Collage; anchored in my own photographs of the architecture of an area as the anchor of the collage, from the stately Victorians of Savannah to the funky shops of West Asheville, North Carolina to every day places, like the Willy’s Ice Cream, here in Waynesboro.

I seem to have two versions of my 'Regional' collages.  The outer landscape regions, based literally on the local area and it’s architecture and the inner regions, emerging from my own interior landscape and the mystical, totemic ones I'm attracted to and resonate with. While there are distinctions, these styles often overlap as well.

I am drawn to incongruous elements and some I use often – shoes, slices of pie, cups and saucers, outsized flowers. These images just speak to me visually. I enjoy how, although most often they are not part of the theme of the collage, they coalesce into a overall image that resonates with me.

At times, I add ‘thematic’ people, like all the ‘White’s, i.e., Jack White and Betty White in the ‘White on White’ collage of the Heritage Restaurant. I often use images that are symbolic to me, like totemic crows. Or, individuals whose lives and work speak me, like Frida Kahlo, Patti Smith or Imogen Cunningham. I also use avatars created to represent myself in collages.

Collage offers me a media that speaks to me deeply, encompassing a great fluidity that lets me express fully; allows me to speak from my many aspects.

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We hope you have enjoyed the exhibit!

To purchase an artwork, please inquire at the theatre box office.

Purchased artwork will be released upon the close of the exhibit on November 18.