Joann McDaniel
Artist Bio:
Joann strives to be a creative powerhouse and art education architect – equal parts visionary, mentor, and maker. she leads vibrant, multi-generational classrooms where handmade papers, paint, clay, and even wool become tools of transformation.
Previously she taught art in Georgia, Massachusetts, Illinois, North Carolina, and Italy for a total of 29+ years of art education experience. Joann is also a local and national award-winning artist, including an ArtPop 2024 Street Gallery artist. SHE lives in charlotte, NC with her handsome husband Tim. Together they Have 3 amazing children, a fluffy White Pyrenees and 2 lazy cats. In 2022 they Opened an art school in south Charlotte called Hands Create Fine Arts Studio, where they help artists discover the joys and possibilities of creating with one’s hands!
Artist Statement:
Alis volat propriis – She flies with her own wings – is more than a motto; it’s a declaration of independence, imagination, and artistic identity. As my first solo show, Altitudes of Her Own explores what it means to chart one’s own creative course through mixed media, memory, and movement.
This body of work is rooted in a love for summer – not the filtered, picture-perfect kind, but the wonderfully weird, joyfully imperfect one: seagulls wheeling over coastal winds, kids with sticky popsicle fingers, a sea goddess crowned in turtle shells and attitude. These paintings blend realism with playful collage and pop-inspired patterns to capture moments where reality leans into magic.
In contrast and complement, the show also features expressive figure drawings – spare, gestural linework that celebrates the human form in its honesty and grace. Some are adorned with bursts of collage, others stand alone in their simplicity, all of them part of the same exploration: where do structure and freedom meet?
Seagulls appear as a visual and symbolic thread – creatures of both land and sky, mischief and movement – echoing the deeper message of this collection: we all have the right, and the power, to fly in our own way.