Margie Prim Exhibit in January at Gallery 308

GALLERY 308, the downtown Muncie art gallery, announced today that an exhibit by Margie Prim, a local painter and member of the Indiana Plein Air Painters and the Minnetrista Art Guild, will open on January 3, 2008. The public is invited to the opening reception, 5-8 p.m., when light refreshments will be served and the artist will be on hand.

Prim's work often features local scenery and still life compositions but with a private, spiritual sense of color. She launched her art career in the 1960s, set it aside for a while before resuming her artistic pursuits in Muncie in the early 1990s. Her paintings have been described as "impressionistic and textural".

She was included in the Indiana Waterways Project in 2002 (which culminated in a book), and her paintings have been in many juried exhibitions, including the Minnetrista Annual, the Richmond Art Museum Annual, the Indiana State Fair, The Women's Commission Art Exhibit, the Red-tail Conservancy Open Spaces Exhibit and the Hoosier Salon.

In 2003 Prim's first one-woman show opened at Maring-Hunt Library. Her work has been shown at other local venues like The Artist Within, Gordy's, The Blue Bottle, The Main Street Coffee Company, F B Fogg and ArtWorks.

Prim started painting as a child in Oklahoma and later took painting classes at a university near her home. After moving to Muncie, she put painting on the back burner for a while, until the 1990s when she decided to paint again. "I enrolled in painting classes at the Stan Nossett Art School, joined the Indiana Plein Air Painters and the Minnetrista Art Guild... I work with only a few brushes and a palette knife, and several tubes of red, yellow, and blue paint. Even so, I like my work to have a soft, gentle feeling." She works on a small scale, usually 16 by 20 inches, both manageable and intimate, "a scale people can relate to..."

Genny Gordy of Gordy's Fine Art and Framing said of Prim: "She has got to be the most awarded female African-American artist in Muncie. She is very important in this community."


Meet Margie Prim at the opening reception for her exhibit, January 3, 5 to 8 p.m., at GALLERY 308, 308 East Main Street, Muncie.

Gallery 308 is a 501(c)(3) community art gallery which exists to provide exhibition space for artists, encourage innovative work and serve the community as a cultural and educational resource. A new exhibit opens at the Gallery every First Thursday. Contributions to Gallery 308 are tax-deductible. For more information about gallery hours, volunteer and donor opportunities, please call 765-289-8575.