The hot, sluggish days of summer are here, and what better way to spend them than inside of a nice air conditioned art gallery with cool, refreshing paintings that will revive your intellectual-self b
The hot, sluggish days of summer are here, and what better way to spend them than inside of a nice air conditioned art gallery with cool, refreshing paintings that will revive your intellectual-self before heading back to school.
Reynolds Gallery is hosting it’s annual summer exhibition, ‘Dog Days,’ with summer influenced pieces that will have attendees thinking in ways they never thought they could.
While loyal artists continue to create summer influenced pieces, Reynold’s Gallery will have a hand-full of fresh works from new clients to add to the diversity of the exhibition.
“We selected artists for the show based on who we work with regularly and also added in some new talent,” said Reynolds Gallery Co-Director, Julia Monroe, in an interview. “Some of the artists like, Sally Bowring, Isabel Bigelow, and Wolf Kahn, are ones who’ve been in the gallery for a long time, and others like Leigh Suggs and Brittany Nelson are relatively new to the gallery.”
“Some of the artists made new work specifically for the show, with the idea of the summertime in mind, and other artists offered fresh works from their studios from which we selected to curate the show.”
Sally Bowring’s “From Place to Place”
With the artist statement ‘Can We Trust Our Eyes?’, the mixed media work of recent VCU MFA graduate Leigh Suggs (her work via her website shown below) is one of many that will enhance this year’s exhibit.
“My mother is an artist and was an art professor at Appalachian State University for over 30 years. So making art and talking about art has always been a part of my life – since I can remember,” said Leigh Suggs in an interview.“…graduate school provided a time for deeper exploration of my work. I was able to focus more on the ‘why’ within my work. I spend so much of my time just making, and never asking myself why. I still don’t have the answer, but I feel like graduate school pushed me to consider the question and be able to talk about my work in a better way.”
“I am interested in an in-between space during the act of seeing,” continued Suggs. “The in-between space lies on the spectrum of the reality in front of us and what our brain tells us…Deceptively simple and minimalistic in content, my work asks the viewer to be patient and to contemplate what is happening. I explore movement, light, and translucency through the use of singular, pattern producing gestures. The reflective surfaces and vibrant intense colors are a simultaneous reflection of physical and psychological states, which make my work ocular and auric. I make art that investigates visual manipulations as subdued objects and experiences.”
Heide Trepanier’s ‘Of Water’
While the title of the exhibition may suggest that there are cosmic themed works, each individual piece has its own underlining idea, tone, and can be perceived entirely different from the next.
“When we got the work in, it was initially a challenge to curate the show in a way that flows well because of the range of styles and materials of each piece,” said Alice Livingston, Co-Director of the Reynold’s Gallery. “In the end we feel the show came together in a cohesive way that highlights each artist.”
“In this show there is a really great variety of art,” said Monroe. “Everything is fairly colorful, fresh, and sort of ‘splashy.’ There are a lot of juxtapositions within the show and because there are so many artists, it’s not like everything kind of matches or flows. There are some things that are paired together because they are different and they work off of each other in a polarizing way. Then there are some things that actually have a lot of overlap that they sort of make sense together, that’s part of what’s so fun about the show. Putting it together in a way that it’s challenging, but it’s also really cohesive to presentation.”
‘Dog Days’ summer art show is on from July 23- September 11, 2015 at Reynold’s Gallery on 1514 West Main Street
Featured artists: Tenley Beazley ● Isabel Bigelow ● Sally Bowring ● Luis Castro ● Steven Cushner ● Gerald Donato ● David Freed ● Joan Gaustad ● Ron Johnson ● Wolf Kahn ● Ray Kass ●Matt King ● Brittany Nelson ● Lee Piechocki ● Richard Roth ● Tanja Softic ● Leigh Suggs ● Heide Trepanier ● Jack Wax
Top image: Tanja Softic’s “Gathered From Available Data”
