So for whatever reason, a bunch of the usual First Friday participants decided to wait an extra week to have their first art openings of the new year. So in addition to last week’s usual First Friday roundup, we’ve decided to bring you an encore rundown of all the great art you can see around the Arts District this Friday night.
So for whatever reason, a bunch of the usual First Friday participants decided to wait an extra week to have their first art openings of the new year. So in addition to last week’s usual First Friday roundup, we’ve decided to bring you an encore rundown of all the great art you can see around the Arts District this Friday night. The idea of doing anything outside might seem like a horrible one right now considering the horribly cold temperatures, but believe it or not, temperatures are expected to hit 50 on Friday, and then reach the 60s over the weekend. Good ol’ RVA weather. So don’t be afraid to brave the outside air this weekend and check out some new art openings! Here are some shows you can check out:
Ghostprint Gallery: Wintery Mix II
Chet Naylor, Vasanta, oil on canvas, 48″ x 48″
This month, Ghostprint Gallery presents Wintery Mix II, a group exhibition featuring the work of Peter Fowler, Josh George, Chet Naylor, George Pratt, Jeffrey Vincent and Amanda Wachob. The exhibition will open with a reception on Friday, January 10 from 6-9 PM at Ghostprint Gallery, located at 220 W. Broad St. Art will remain on display through January 31.
Quirk Gallery: Andras Bality & Andre Shank
This month, Quirk Gallery presents two new exhibitions: new work by Andras Bality in the Main Gallery, and new work by Andre Shank in the Shop Wall display space. These exhibitions will open with a reception on Friday, January 10 from 5-8 PM at Quirk Gallery, located at 311 W. Broad St. Art will remain on display through the end of February.
The Gallery At UNOS: Within Me
This month, The Gallery at UNOS presents Within Me, featuring new work by Monica Rao and Sonja Moore.
Monica Rao is a professionally trained artist who recently has returned to her artistic roots. Rao comes from a family of artists in India, and she believes in “free flow.” Rao never uses a paint brush and lets intuition guide her hand. “When I Start a canvas, my imagination runs free.”
Sonja Moore is a UNOS team member who recently lost a friend to pancreatic cancer. With the shock of his sudden death, Sonja disengaged from her photography. She was able to renew her creativity through UNOS Core Values and a trip to Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens. Read about her full story at kenwoodgallery.com.
Within Me will open with a reception on Friday, January 10 from 5-7:30 PM at The Gallery At UNOS, located at 700 North 4th St. Art will remain on display through February 22.
1708 Gallery: New/Used/Wet/Broken
1708 Gallery presents New/Used/Wet/Broken, an exhibition of sculpture, video, and installation by Texas artist Jeff Williams.
Williams’ work tests the structural limits of materials as well as conventional understandings of where art begins and ends. Engaging entropic forces such as tension and corrosion, Williams deploys wear and deterioration as creative processes.
New/Used/Wet/Broken will open with a reception on Friday, January 10 from 6-9 PM, with an artist’s talk at 6:30, at 1708 Gallery, located at 319 W. Broad St. Art will remain on display through February 8.
Atlas Gallery: Dear Me
ART 180 is turning 15! And so, as an adolescent, we are feeling experimental and independent, yet like any teenager we still have lots to learn and become. There are so, so many people who can share valuable insights and inspire us to reach for the moon.
To honor our 15th anniversary, ART 180 is leading a project that asks the community to explore what it means to be fifteen. In its initial phase, the organization invited 50 adult community members to write letters to their 15-year-old selves. ART 180’s teen leadership group then interpreted the letters through mixed media collage.
“Dear Me…” is a year-long art project designed to consider what it means to be fifteen. After the exhibition, the letters and mixed media collages will be turned into a small deck of cards, encouraging the community to spread the letters’ messages by trading the cards, buying them for friends and family, anonymously leaving them in places, or keeping them as a set to display. Proceeds will support ART 180 programs for young people in challenging circumstances.
Dear Me… will open with a reception on Friday, January 10 from 6-9 PM at Atlas, Art 180’s Art Center For Teens, located at 114 W. Marshall St. The letters will remain on display through February.
Candela Gallery: Louis Draper Retrospective
Candela Gallery hosts a retrospective of midcentury Afican-American photographer Louis Draper, showcasing over 40 of Draper’s photographs, from the 1950s to the 1990s.
A native of Richmond, Virginia, Draper moved to Harlem to study photography in 1958, a time of growing civil unrest across the country. There he was a founding member of the Kamoinge Workshop, the seminal black photographers’ collective whose intention was “to create the kind of images of our communities that spoke the truth we’d witnessed and that countered the untruths we’d all seen in mainline publications.” Although he was primarily a street photographer, his archive encompasses a wide range of artistic approaches and subjects, including portraiture and abstraction. Notable contemporaries photographed by Draper include Langston Hughes, Hughie Lee Smith, Miles Davis, Malcolm X, Katherine Dunham, and the civil rights activist, Fannie Lou Hamer.
The Louis Draper Retrospective opens on Friday, January 10 from 5-8 PM at Candela Books & Gallery, located at 214 W. Broad St. Art will remain on display through February 22.
Reynolds Gallery: Siemon Allen Exhibition
“Naglegioen II”, 2004, Hahnemuhle museum etching fine art paper, foam board, masking tape, velcro, 162 x 82 x 0.5 inches
This month, Reynolds Gallery presents an Exhibition of work by South African artist Siemon Allen.
Siemon Allen’s studio practice reflects a number of distinct yet interconnected processes in which his overlapping interests in aesthetics and politics allow him to produce works that are loaded with historical significance and visual magnitude. He systematically accumulates mass-produced materials including postal stamps, newspapers, old film stock, trading cards, comics, and audio recordings. Allen catalogues, displays and utilizes these visual culture artifacts as raw material for creating large-scale works that challenge the division between sculpture and painting. His approach is not unlike that of an archivist, each collected item bringing with it the narrative of its production, dissemination, and function. Yet configured for exhibition, Allen’s collection projects operate as gridded pattern fields and are transformed into autonomous art objects.
Siemon Allen Exhibition will open with a reception on Friday, January 10 from 7-9 PM at Reynolds Gallery, located at 1514 W. Main St. Art will remain on display through February 15.
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Well, there you go, that’s our special January 2014 encore presentation of First Friday. Next month we assume all the galleries will be back to doing openings on the same Friday, but we’ll keep you posted if that changes!
