First Friday RVA, October 2013: A Burning Love Of Art

by | Oct 2, 2013 | ART

Ladies and gentlemen, autumn has arrived in RVA once again, and it’s time to light the fire and keep the chill away as the air finally begins to cool down a bit. This summer was milder than most, it’s true, but as everyone who watches Game Of Thrones will tell you, winter is coming. So before it arrives, now’s the time to light up the night with fire and keep ourselves warm with the soothing glow of art.

Ladies and gentlemen, autumn has arrived in RVA once again, and it’s time to light the fire and keep the chill away as the air finally begins to cool down a bit. This summer was milder than most, it’s true, but as everyone who watches Game Of Thrones will tell you, winter is coming. So before it arrives, now’s the time to light up the night with fire and keep ourselves warm with the soothing glow of art. After last month’s record-setting whirlwind of gallery openings, a lot of the galleries along Broad and Main streets will be offering encore presentations of what they had on display last month, but there’s plenty of new art to see out there this month as well–and of course, Gallery 5 always does it up big for October with their annual Carnival Of 5 Fires celebration, so let’s start there, shall we?

Gallery 5: Carnival Of 5 Fires

Annnnnnd here we go! The quirky, kooky, creative, sexy and sometimes bizarre The Carnival of 5 Fires is back again for it’s 7th year over at the oldest standing firehouse turned cultural hub, Gallery5! This year promises the usual multiple nights of art, live music, DJs, fire performance, circus arts, burlesque, bellydance, magic, vaudeville, comedy, tarot reading and everything in between. Come one, come all ya’ll!

First Friday October 4th kickoff! Artwork by Nicole Randall, Erzulie, Abigail Larson, Eliza Childress, Meaghan Hobson, the debut of Richmond Tarot Project: The Greater Secrets by Carly Romeo and Emily Franzak, jewelry by Obscuro

Inside stage performances by Erzulie, Scarlet Starlet, Deepa De Jour, Cherrie Canary, Siren Sivette, Lottie Ellington, Melody Magpie, Bitsy Buttons, singers from Caresse Du Soir! Live music by The Vulgar Bulgars, I Am Love, and Qiet! Raffle prizes out the wazoooo! Hosted by the fabulous Deanna Danger!

The Party Liberation Front Street Show! Richmond’s favorite burnery collective will once again close down the street beside G5, crank up the tunes from PLF’s finest DJs, and light up multiple fire toys for one hot display of fire feats and circus performance. Including special guests from Charlottesville’s Scintillation and more!

The kickoff reception for October’s Carnival Of 5 Fires will take place on First Friday, October 4, beginning at 7 PM, at Gallery 5, located at 200 W. Marshall St. The artwork will remain on display throughout the month of October. For more info on the Carnival of 5 Fires, click here.

Ghostprint Gallery: Micropolis


Sleepy Time Despot, mixed media on panel

Micropolis presents Josh George’s interpretation of city living: the urban landscape and how he imagines we interact with and within it. Using his signature painting/collage technique, George prepares a panel with layers of maps (usually of Italy), wallpaper and other elements. Once this foundation is laid down, the figures are painted in, then embellished with additional collage that further enriches them. George’s vibrant colors combine with the complex layering to create an visual experience that is exciting for the viewer.

According to George, the series of paintings is both a love letter and a regret letter to two cities he considers home— New York and Richmond. “Each place is rich and beautiful—gritty and limited and frustrating in its own way,” he says.

After ten years of living in Brooklyn and now four in Richmond, George realizes that neither place satisfies fully. “Even while I accept the bats flying over the lakes in Byrd Park and tolerate the rats crawling around the subway platforms in NY, each city inspires in me a unique longing to be somewhere else. This search for the perfect place seems modern and human to me—many of us might be looking for places that just don’t exist. In short, I feel a sort of restlessness that I try to temper by appreciating all the gritty, gnarly beauty both places offer.”

Micropolis will open with an artist’s preview reception on Thursday, October 3 from 6-9 PM, followed by a First Friday reception on October 4, at Ghostprint Gallery, located at 220 W. Broad St. The exhibition will remain on display through November 30.

Quirk Gallery: Murmurations & The Sky Is Blue And So Is The Sea

Quirk Gallery presents a continuation of Kendra Dawn Wadsworth’s Murmurations, which originally opened on September 5, in the main gallery; and Aimee Joyaux’s The Sky Is Blue And So Is The Sea, which opens in the Shop Wall & Vault Galleries this month.

Aimee Joyaux holds an MFA in Photography from the University of Oregon. She has exhibited her mixed media work throughout the United States with featured exhibitions in Chicago, Philadelphia, and at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Joyaux has been the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Residency Grant at the Center for Book and Paper through Columbia College in Chicago and an Individual Artist Grant from the Indiana Arts Commission. An educator for more than twenty-five years, Joyaux has been recognized for her teaching by the Presidential Scholars Program and The Alliance for Young Artists and Writers. She has taught at the university, community college, and high school levels as well as the Penland School of Craft and Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. Joyaux is currently the Vice President of Arts Education at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. She lives in Petersburg VA in a recently renovated cotton warehouse.

Murmurations and The Sky Is Blue And So Is The Sea open with a reception and artist talk by Kendra Dawn Wadsworth and Aimee Joyaux on Thursday, October 3 at 6:30 PM, followed by a First Friday reception on October 4 from 5-8 PM, at Quirk Gallery, located at 311 W. Broad St. Both exhibitions will remain on display through October 26.

Virginia Center For Latin American Art: Interchanges

The Virginia Center for Latin American Art is proud to present Interchanges at VACLAA on Broad this First Friday. This group show features artists Julian Kreimer, Kandy Lopez and Leo Castañeda, curated by Dianne Hebbert. Each artist has a unique approach to spatial representation, exploring the possibilities of landscapes. How do you represent a feeling, an imagined space, or your home? They push and pull between abstraction and traditional landscape art, exchanging and connecting artistic methods.

Kandy Lopez creates mix media drawings of Miami’s urban communities in her series Miami Project. Her variety in scale and refreshing perspective invites the viewer to experience an environment. Julian Kreimer’s interesting range of work and acute eye for color form a particular energy between the two bodies of work. He paints landscapes from life as well as abstraction. The two inform each other and bridge two ends of a spectrum. Colombian-born Leo Castañeda combines classical methods of illusionist image-making with abstraction to create spaces that absorb the viewer in a tightly, almost psychotic aesthetic rhythm. Castañeda then recreates events in his paintings and drawings using mediums such as interactive sculpture and performance, to engage his audience as participators rather than passive observers.

Interchanges will open with a First Friday reception on October 4 from 5-9 PM at the Virginia Center For Latin American Art’s mobile gallery, located for the evening at 401 W. Broad St.

Art6: Rhythm And Dance

This month, Art6 presents Rhythm And Dance, “a show of works in all mediums inspired by music and dance.” The exhibition will premiere with an opening reception, featuring live performances by the Chinese Folk Dance Club and Anja Dance Tribal, on First Friday, October 4, from 6-10 PM at Art6, located at 6 E. Broad St. The exhibition will remain on display throughout the month of October.

Studio Two Three: Sweaty Armpits And Swimming Pools

This month, Studio Two Three presents Sweaty Armpits & Swimming Pools: A Summer-Themed Instant Zine Exhibition.

Come join us this First Friday where we’ll be featuring instant zines from a recent exchange comprised of twenty-five artists from the Richmond and Baltimore area. Participating artists of the exchange were asked to create an edition using screen-printing and/or digital printmaking techniques.

We believe that zines have the potential to make printmaking interactive, offering multiple ways of viewing. Come join us and see for yourself! We’ll even have an interactive demo all night where you can make your own instant zine!

25 Participating Artists include: Meghann Altomare, Emma Barnes, Brian Baynes, Rellie Brewer, Jeremy Biby, Victoria Borges, Kelsie Conley, Ajah Courts, Kevin Dam, Gavin Foster, Annie Greene, Jorge Guillen, Emily Haislip, Deanna Hamad, Laura Hernandez, Mara Hyman, Brooke Inman, Gabe John Kendra, Rachel Livingston, Greg Pavek, Elisa Rios, Ginna Shea, Alexx Valencia, Abbie Wise, and Vivien Wise.

Sweaty Armpits And Swimming Pools will open with a reception on First Friday, October 4, beginning at 7 PM, at Studio Two Three, located at 1617 W. Main St. The exhibition will remain on display through October 25.

Glave Kocen Gallery: Unravel

The soul wants what the soul wants and for Frankie Slaughter, stripping away the very fibers that propelled her all the way to the 2012 New York Fashion Week could not be ignored any longer. Frankie is very well known for her one of a kind jackets that combine traditional and contemporary, The East & The West but many of her patrons are unaware of her other disciplines she has been working in; Mixed Media Paintings, Sculpture and now even Video Collage . “Unravel” represents Frankie’s deep desire to reveal this side of her work and to forward the idea of just what do all those threads mean physically in space as well as metaphorically in our collective minds. It is a very autobiographical exhibit and visually will be awe inspiring as Frankie’s work will overtake the space from the gallery’s walls to the rafters. “This is easily one of the most ambitious exhibits we’ve ever mounted.” Says BJ Kocen Co-Director of the gallery.

Unravel will open with a reception on First Friday, October 4 from 6-9 PM at Glave Kocen Gallery, located at 1620 W. Main St. The exhibition will remain on display through October 23.

Uptown Gallery: Memories And Mountains

A special exhibit by RL Thomas, from Pulaski, Virginia. Thomas’s love of watercolor is evident in his fresh and loose technique, and his love for Virginia is also clear in his atmospheric landscapes. RL exhibits frequently and the Radford area, but this exhibit is a unique opportunity to see his work in Richmond. RL first studied Commercial Art & Design at Richmond Professional Institute. He returned to western Virginia and had a varied career, ranging from illustration and advertising to selling real estate. In retirement, RL’s passion for painting was rekindled, and at the age of 69, he went to graduate school, studying with internationally renowned watercolorist Z.L. Feng at Radford University.

Memories And Mountains will open with a reception on First Friday, October 4 from 5-9 PM at Uptown Gallery, located at 1305 W. Main St. The exhibition will remain on display through November 30.

Page Bond Gallery: Surveying Light & This Heavy Veil

This month, Page Bond Gallery presents two different exhibitions: Surveying Light by Isabelle Abbot and This Heavy Veil: Recent Photographs From Naples by William Wylie.


Isabelle Abbot, August, 2013, Oil on canvas, 56 x 48 inches

Isabelle Abbot is a Virginia-based painter who thinks of her “land portraits” as existing between realism and abstraction. Her suggestive, loose interpretations of the Virginia countryside are all painted en plein air and quickly. Speed, says Abbot, forces her to “edit honestly” and to “pare down to capture what is essential: the light, the time of day and season, the lay of the land.” Abbot prefers a relatively small, intimate scale, which places her paintings in dialogue with the body of the viewer. For Abbot, painting is an investigative tool by which she can experience and understand the world around her. “The canvas surface opens as I paint, and I follow marks into the picture plane just as I would walk into the landscape: searching for the familiar and by associations making new connections,” Abbot writes. Her gestural, dynamic paintings condense the landscape into the human language of fundamental shape, line, and color.


William Wylie, Amphitheater of Pompeii, 2013, Pigment ink print, Edition of 3, 40 x 50 inches

William Wylie is an American photographer whose work delves deeply into the landscape. His favored medium is a large-format, 8″ x 10″ camera, which records each personally significant scene with a uniformly high level of detail. With it he has worked extensively in Italy as well as through the Western United States Photographing for extended periods at each site his work touches on both natural and cultural history. Past projects in the US include documenting the Cache la Poudra River, the last undammed river on the Front Range in Colorado (where Wylie walked 150 miles from the mouth of the river on the eastern plains of Colorado to its headwaters at the Continental Divide) and more recently, his 2010 project traversed along the entire distance of Route 36 in Kansas also followed a pathway through the terrain. Projects in Italy have looked at the marble quarries in Carrara as well as the industrialized and urban streets of Rome. “All my work is always about the particulars of places,” Wylie says, “how they function and what they reveal.”

His newest series, This Heavy Veil, was made during his participation in a Lewitt/Doran artist residency through the Yale University Art Museum in Praiano, Italy. Immersed in the art and writing of Sol LeWitt, Wylie recorded the spectacular sea and landscape around Naples, Mount Vesuvius, and the Amalfi Coast in both photographs and video work. The richness of detail, the play of shadow, and direct, engaging perspective of Wylie’s work invite viewers to consider the beauty of scenes they might otherwise dismiss.

Surveying Light and This Heavy Veil will premiere with an opening reception on First Friday, October 4 from 7-9 PM at Page Bond Gallery, located at 1635 W. Main St. The exhibition will remain on display through October 30.

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Artists! Galleries! Would you like your future First Friday events covered in these monthly articles? We might hear styleabout your event anyway, but why leave it to chance? Email your press releases to andrew@rvamag.com.

Marilyn Drew Necci

Marilyn Drew Necci

Former GayRVA editor-in-chief, RVA Magazine editor for print and web. Anxiety expert, proud trans woman, happily married.




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