There’s a lot going on this weekend, folks–between Fall Line Fest, the return of NFL football, Sprint Cup races at RIR and Hank 3 at The National, it can be easy to lose track of the local institution that is the First Friday Art Walk. But don’t take it for granted! This is also the first First Friday (always a funny phrase to write) of the fall semester, and the return of the students always brings a big month for local art.
There’s a lot going on this weekend, folks–between Fall Line Fest, the return of NFL football, Sprint Cup races at RIR and Hank 3 at The National, it can be easy to lose track of the local institution that is the First Friday Art Walk. But don’t take it for granted! This is also the first First Friday (always a funny phrase to write) of the fall semester, and the return of the students always brings a big month for local art. So before you dive into Fall Line Fest’s plentiful smorgasbord of live music, or head for any of the million dance parties springing up all over town, take some time to check out all the amazing sights available along Broad and Main streets this Friday night. You certainly won’t regret it. Here are some things to keep an eye out for:
Gallery 5: The Portrait Show
A portrait is defined as a representation or impression of someone or something. This show of twenty-plus Richmond artists displays how visual artists from various disciplines interpret, and in some cases stretch, the concept of one of the most classical ideas in art. Each artist, in their practice, is presenting a perspective conceptually and technically on what they consider a portrait to be.
Artist in the show include Jeff Love, Josh George, Ally Hodges, Chris Visions, Cathryn Hutton, Richie Pope, Jamie Douglas, Shawn Yu, Jeremy Wilson, Matt Lively, Sishir Bommakanti, Albert Epshteyn, Dane Cozens, Shawn Saharko, Young Hwan Yoo, Nicole Hamilton, Julie Hinzmann, Kevin Michael Roberts, Steven Chen, Philip Whisenhuntan, and more.
The Portrait Show will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6, beginning at 6 PM. The reception will also feature live music beginning at 8 PM, from Clair Morgan, Herro Sugar, and Strumpet, as well as a performance in the upstairs gallery by RVA Dance Collective. Gallery 5 is located at 200 W. Marshall St. The Portrait Show will remain on display throughout September.
Quirk Gallery: Murmurations & El Kamino
Quirk Gallery presents two exhibitions this month: Kendra Dawn Wadsworth’s Murmurations in the main gallery, and new works by El Kamino in the vault and shop wall galleries.
Kendra Dawn Wadsworth earned a BFA in Painting and Printmaking from VCU and her MFA in Painting from the University of Pennsylvania. Wadsworth’s paintings have been featured in solo and group shows throughout the country. She has received numerous awards, including a 2010 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship. She also designed and executed all of the installation art work for the Academy Award winning film, A Beautiful Mind. Kendra is a professor at VCUArts.
Raised in the suburbs of Richmond, El Kamino started wall painting/graffiti as a teenager, before landing in art school at VCU. He has recently completed high profile commissions for Converse and the 2012 RVA Street Art Festival, where his “Richmond” piece on the Canal Walk remains a popular photo spot.
El Kamino will return for the 2013 RVA Street Art Festival September 11th through 15th. See some of his interior work before he goes big the following weekend!
Both of these shows will open with an artist’s reception on Thursday, September 5 from 5-8 PM, followed by a First Friday Reception on Friday, September 6 from 5-9 PM at Quirk Gallery, located at 311 W. Broad St. Murmurations will remain on display through October 26, and El Kamino will remain on display through September 28.
LoveRVA: James Walker
“It all starts with photographs. I make pictures of everything. All the time. Snapping photos and drawing pictures and painting and collaging and collecting and gathering information is my way of being enveloped in every second of every day. I try to take as little for granted as possible. There are no projects. It’s just my life. It’s all one big documentary. Thanks for looking.” –James Walker
This exhibition of new work by James Walker will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6, beginning at 7 PM, and will include musical performances from Richmanian Ramblers, DJ Mikemetic, Black Liquid, Rattlemouth, and Leverage Models, presented by Fall Line Fest. LoveRVA Gallery is located at 202 W. Broad St.
Gallery At UNOS: Hot 100 & Mind’s Eye
HOT 100 by Kathleen Calhoun is 100 pieces of art created in 100 days during the summer of 2013. For Kathy, it was a playful project with two goals–doing something intuitive, and completing a large body of work. Each piece includes four colors and a variety of items, including wax, chalk, cardboard, salt, and pastels. View the entire HOT 100 collection at kathycalhoun.com.
Mind’s Eye by Greig Leach is all about color created on the surface of paper with Shiva Paintstiks. Greig paints images that have imprinted on his mind’s eye–images that come from memory, sketches, and other sources. In Greig’s wors, “The painting paints itself!” Greig has a close connection to UNOS. Kidney disease runs in his family, and his father-in-law was listed for a kidney transplant. View his wide collection, including Tour de France 2013, still lifes, and food at greigleach.com.
HOT 100 and Mind’s Eye will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6 from 5-7:30 PM at The Gallery At UNOS, located at 700 N. Fourth St. Both exhibitions will remain on display through October 26.
Visual Art Studio: Trojan Horse
Trojan Horse, 9×12 collage
Visual Art Studio gallery presents Trojan Horse, a mixed media exhibition by Richmond artist Frederick Chiriboga.
Trojan Horse is a collection of approximately 20 new and retrospective paintings, sculptures, collages and constructions that, as the title implies, is not always what it seems from the outside. You are in for surprises if you take the time to look.
“I use found objects in my sculpture and found ideas in my painting. Nothing comes from nothing, and the pretentious claim of “originality” in Art can only be made for interpretation. (So beware what you admire…) In Nature, little is wasted or superfluous. The the artist can only aspire to imitate such economy of means and directness, and consequently try in his work to adhere to the deceptively simple precept that anything that is not essential is unnecessary. Unless one’s goal is mainly to decorate or please, the result will not be starved art, or work that lacks humor and irony, and for me especially—darkness.” —Frederick Chiriboga
Trojan Horse will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6, from 7-10 PM at Visual Art Studio, located at 208 W. Broad St. The exhibition will remain on display through October 25.
1708 Gallery: FEED2013
1708 Gallery is pleased to announce its third biennial juried exhibition, FEED2013. FEED2013 features five artists, selected out of 377 national and international submissions, by jurors Sarah Eckhardt, Assistant Curator in Modern and Contemporary Art, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; and Corin Hewitt, Assistant Professor in Sculpture + Extended Media, Virginia Commonwealth University. The exhibition provides selected artists with well-deserved exposure while serving as a springboard for their artistic careers. The five finalists include Eleanor Aldrich of Knoxville, TN; Joshua Haycraft of Washington, D.C.; Raewyn Martyn of Richmond, VA; Michael Mergen of Farmville, VA; and Lior Modan of Richmond, VA.
The FEED2013 artists’ works are topical and compelling, addressing issues that range from the domestic residue of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to Orwellian virtual realities to medium-specific inquiries. At different turns tongue-in-cheek and melancholic, these artists’ works act locally and think globally, engaging overlapping problems of art and life through poetry, a little mischief, and acute attention to form.
FEED2013 will open with a reception and gallery talk with the artists and jurors on Thursday, September 5 from 6-8 PM. There will also be a First Friday reception from 5-9 PM on Friday, September 6. 1708 Gallery is located at 319 W. Broad St. FEED2013 will remain on display through October 19.
Virginia Center For Latin American Art: ViceVersa
The Virginia Center for Latin American Art (VACLAA) is excited to bring the dynamic vision of the Meeting Haus Collective to VACLAA on Broad. Artists from Meeting Haus will include Jasmin Merida, Sandra Cornejo, Janelle Ortiz, Ignacio Joseph Orzal, and Rodrigo Carazas Portal. In addition to a group installation on our mobile Galeria Movimiento, and a show of 2D work in our new gallery in the lobby of Moore’s Autobody Shop, Latino indie folk group Son Cosa Seria will engage the crowd with an interactive performance inspired in the frenetic fandango of rural Mexico. Latin food trucks, Colombian craft vendors and Backseat Gallery will also be on hand.
VACLAA‘s presentation of ViceVersa will open with a reception taking place at 5 PM on First Friday, September 6, in the parking lot of Moore’s Auto Body Shop, located at 401 W. Broad St.
Art6: Azucar II
This month, Art6 presents Azucar II, a celebration of Hispanic History Month featuring work honoring Hispanic history and culture. The event will combine art, crafts, and salsa music from DJ Sweet Lou. The event will take place on First Friday, September 6, from 6-10 PM, at Art6, located at 6. E. Broad St.
Richmond Public Library: Herald 1
Over KeyWest, 18×24 photograph by Anne Savedge
The Richmond Public Library presents Herald 1, an exhibition of works from 12 Richmond artists, including Andras Bality, Brad Birchett, Kathleen Markowitz, Sarah Masters, Elaine Rogers, Diego Sanchez, Tom Chambers, Pam Fox, John Heroy, Anne Savedge, Medford Taylor, and David R. White. Herald 1 will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6, from 6:30-9 PM at the Richmond Public Library‘s Main Branch, located at 101 E. Franklin St.
Books Bikes And Beyond: Nothing, Butt Trouble.
This month, Books Bikes And Beyond presents, Nothing, Butt Trouble., an exhibition of new and recent works by James “Barf” Callahan. The exhibition will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6, beginning at 7 PM, at Books Bikes And Beyond Thrift Store, located at 7 W. Broad St. Work will remain on display through September 30.
mOb & Storefront For Community Design: Urban Interventions
This month, mOb+Storefront present a large-scale model for “urban interventions” designed for downtown Richmond by mOb jOb 2 and Gil Ga On. This work looks at ways that green spaces could be successfully integrated into Richmond’s urban grid. This exhibition will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6, from 5-9 PM, at the Storefront For Community Design, located at 205 E. Broad St.
Edit Gallery: An Exploration
During the entire month of September, Gallery Edit at Hillside Missions will be featuring the work of Becky Hill. Becky is a local multimedia artist with a strong emphasis on ceramics. An Exploration highlights her passion for international mission work, stories of the time she spent in Africa, and mix of prints, ceramics, and photos that highlight Becky’s pursuit of beauty as worship to God. Come drink West African tea with us, meet & chat with Becky, and get a look at how art and Christianity pretty much go together like peanut butter and jelly.
An Exploration will open on First Friday, September 6, with a reception from 5-9 PM at Edit Gallery, located at 8 E. Broad St. The exhibition will remain on display throughout September.
Atlas, Art 180’s Art Center For Teens: GuitART! A “Case” For Music And Art
GuitART! A “Case” for Music and Art celebrates artist-musicians in honor of ART 180’s 15th anniversary, and features original art on guitar case lids donated by TKLd/Cedar Creek, makers of musical instrument cases. 15 professional artist-musicians—visual artists who are also known for their musical abilities (or vice versa) —and 15 young artist-musicians designed original art pieces using the donated case lids.
Artist-musicians include adults Josie Davis, Doug Dobey, Julie Elkins, Chris Milk Hulburt, Daniel Johnson, Lily Lamberta, Brian Landis, Keith Ramsey, Noah Scalin, Bonnie Staley, Ed Trask, Heide Trepanier, Tommy Van Auken, Jonathan Vassar, Mica Whitney, and Mikemetic Williams; and young people Cole Alder, Maya Altug, Miles Barnett, Chris Bolling, Anwen Farmer, Greta Gotschalk, Odessa Hott, Maya Jackson, Jane Lively, Jackson Meyer, Jack Oliver, Harper Price, Alyasia Shaw, Alexander Trimmingham, Christian Trimmingham, and Sydney Vick.
This traveling exhibition honors ART 180’s history of making the case that creative expression affords young people the opportunity to transform their lives and communities.
GuitART! A “Case” for Music and Art will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6 from 6-9 PM at Atlas: Art 180’s Art Center For Teens, located at 114 W. Marshall St. The exhibition will remain on display through October 28.
ADA Gallery: Geometron
This month, ADA Gallery presents Sarah Bednarek’s Geometron.
Bednarek Is A 2005 MFA Graduate Of The Sculpture And Extended Media Program At Virginia Commonwealth University. Her Work Has Been Internationally Showcased In Pork Barrel And Madison’s Cave At The Keith Talent Gallery, London, Where She Was Also Published In The Art Magazine Miser And Now (2005). Sarah Was Born In Racine, WI And Lives And Works In Brooklyn, NY.
Geometron will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6 from 6-9 PM at ADA Gallery, located at 228 W. Broad St. The exhibition will remain on display through October 12.
Turnstyle On The Artwalk: Alex Key
This month’s Turnstyle On The Artwalk presentation features a return engagement by Alex Key, whose Joyride exhibit grabbed our attention last year. His pop art paintings will be on display again at Turnstyle, accompanied by vinyl DJ sets on the sidewalk outside the store by Marty Styles and Carlos Alves. Turnstyle On The Artwalk will take place First Friday, September 6, from 7-10 PM, at Turnstyle, located at 102 W. Broad St. Alex Key’s artwork will remain on display through September 28.
Steady Sounds: The Last Chapter
Steady Sounds presents The Last Chapter, an exhibition of new works by Brent McHugh and Gioia Varesi. The exhibition will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6, from 7-10 PM at Steady Sounds, located at 322 W. Broad St. Work will remain on display throughout September.
Candela Books & Gallery: Light Lure
Outer Banks Fishing Pier, 2012, Carbon Pigment Print from an underwater pinhole camera
Light Lure consists of large-scale underwater pinhole photographs made at each of the 19 fishing piers along the North Carolina coast. Courtney Johnson’s handmade pinhole cameras were constructed with cookie tins, fishing line and weights, and waterproof tape, then submerged into the Atlantic Ocean. The resulting images are wildly colorful, often painterly and always enigmatic; as easily a representation of cellular biology or deep space as the underwater environ it documents. By highlighting both the science and mystery inherent in photography, as well as the vast unknowable waters of this earth, these photographs ignite the imagination.
Light Lure opens with a preview reception and artist’s talk on Thursday, September 5 from 5-8 PM, followed by a First Friday opening reception on September 6 from 5-9 PM at Candela Gallery, located at 214 W. Broad St. The exhibition will remain on display through October 19.
Black Iris: Let There Be GWAR
The first ever behind-the-scenes gallery retrospective of the career of influential art, punk and metal group GWAR. Titled Let There Be GWAR, the exhibit features more than 400 objects spanning the group’s three decade career, including handwritten lyrics, production drawings, tour ledgers, arrest reports, photography, film, lawsuit transcripts, music videos, set designs, fan letters, acid drawings and album art. The exhibit will also include more personal items such as never-before-seen storyboards, genitalia molds and handwritten set lists, as well as personal sketchbooks from members Dave Brockie, Matt Maguire and Bob Gorman. The exhibit is the result of unprecedented access to the archives of the Richmond-based Slave Pit artist collective, from which GWAR originated.
Formed in 1984 by members of the Slave Pit, GWAR’s controversial, elaborate and graphic performances and recordings portrayed a loosely organized group of Richmond squatter-punk-artists as powerful immortal warriors with an endless appetite for violence, sex, drugs and power. The group’s outer space origin story has resulted in extensive creative output from the Slave Pit, encompassing music, comics, stage design, pageantry, costumes, role playing games and graphic art. GWAR’s nihilistic, intergalactic mythology engages social and political issues with irreverent abandon.
Let There Be GWAR will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6 beginning at 5 PM at Black Iris Gallery, located at 321 W. Broad St. The exhibition will remain on display through September 28.
VCUArts Anderson Gallery: Towards Liberation, Neighbors, In The Cool Spot Lounge, Project 35 Volume 2
VCUArts’ Anderson Gallery presents four new exhibitions for Fall 2013.
Nancy Spero: Towards Liberation–Nancy Spero’s groundbreaking career as an artist and anti-war activist spanned more than fifty years. This exhibition features over two dozen rarely seen collages from the 1980s and 90s that reveal Spero’s innovative approach to printmaking in scroll-like expanses of paper, as well as her lifelong engagement with contemporary political, social, and cultural issues.
Bohyun Yoon: Neighbors–Bohyun Yoon uses the special properties of glass and the play of light and shadow to create installation, sound, and video works that often incorporate performance and the body as a multifaceted metaphor. A primary interest, he notes, is making visible that which is invisible or elusive. He pursues this idea in his work as a way not only to reinforce formal aspects of his medium like transparency, refraction, distortion, and reflection, but also to reveal a deeper sense of human connection that supersedes physical, political, and social distinctions.
Hilary Wilder: in the Cool Spot Lounge–In an occasional series that features new, often site-specific works by VCUarts faculty, Hilary Wilder will unveil a large-scale painting made especially for our gallery lounge. With this project, she continues to investigate the role of place, memory, and desire through the genre of landscape.
Project 35: Volume 2 is an eclectic compilation of 35 works selected by an international group of 35 curators exploring video as a contemporary art medium. The series will be presented in four parts, changing every three weeks, with eight or nine videos featured in each installment. Individual works range in length from two to 26 minutes. The videos presented in this volume, produced between 2001 and 2012, explore such wide-ranging topics as protests in South Africa, youth culture in Ho Chi Minh City, news broadcasts in China, and street crime in Bogotá. Recurrent themes focus on memory and change, performance and documentation, fiction and history, and notions of place and identity, as well as the power of images and the role of the media in shaping collective experience. The series also reveals the diversity of approaches used by video artists, including documentary, YouTube, and digital animation.
These four exhibits will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6 from 5-7 PM at VCUArts’ Anderson Gallery, located at 907 1/2 W. Franklin St. They will remain on display through December 9.
Studio Two Three: Steamrolled RVA–Community Carving
Studio Two Three is creating an Epic, Giant Woodcut Map of Richmond to be printed on site with a steamroller at the RVA Street Art Festival!
Make your mark on the PRINT BIG project by actually carving into the woodblocks! We’ll be in true Print Shop form for First Friday with saw dust on the floor & woodcutting tools (and supervision!) on hand. Come let your hair down and pick up a dremel tool for some woodcut fun!
The woodcuts will then be printed onsite at the RVA Street Art Festival September 14th & 15th with a real steamroller!
The Steamrolled RVA Community Carving event will take place on First Friday, September 6, from 7-9 PM at Studio Two Three, located at 1617 W. Main St.
Glave Kocen Gallery: New Works by Sheep Jones
Sheep Jones’ paintings begin with layers. From her past work in watercolor and wax she has held on to the opportunities that mixing transparent colors offers. Layers add extra interest, leaving swatches of colors in their wake. These are doorways for the imagination. She always is looking for the puzzle pieces to suggest a narrative. Disparate images finally come together and start to hint at some kind of sense. The thing is, all people have stories. Often, they will look at one of her paintings and recognize in it their own story, their own past, their own dreams.
New Works by Sheep Jones will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6 from 6-9 PM at Glave Kocen Gallery, located at 1620 W. Main St. The exhibition will remain on display through September 28.
Artemis Gallery: Garmezy Glass And Friends
Garmezy Glass & Friends features the highly individualistic glass work of up and coming artist Grant Garmezy and other glass artists. Grant Garmezy is a professional glass artist based out of Richmond, Virginia. Grant, originally from Nashville Tennessee, received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth School of the Arts. Grant is known for his natural life-like glass sculptural work that can be seen both nationally and internationally. For almost ten years he has been making sculptural glass objects with the intention of pushing the boundaries of glass sculpting to create something new and original. Grant’s work will be featured along with glass artists Erin Neff, John Forsythe, Michael Martin, Adam Childress, Lucy Gillis, and Sean Donlon. Also to be featured are Sports Cars by car restoration specialist Ken Knehr, who details Ferrari, Alpha Romeo, Maserati, Porsche, and other sports cars!
Garmezy Glass & Friends will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6 from 5-10 PM at Artemis Gallery, located at 1601 W. Main St. The exhibition will remain on display through September 30.
Uptown Gallery: Places And Faces, Red Dress, & The Docents Show
Island Sunset, Betty Drozeski
This month, Uptown Gallery presents three new shows. Places And Faces, an exhibition of new works by Betty Drozeski and Blanton Seward, with guest artist Betty Eddowes, will be in the Main Gallery; Red Dress, a new show by Arlene DeConti, will be in the Frable Gallery; and The Docents Show, featuring paintings by docents of the Virginia Museum Of Fine Arts, will be in the Elm Gallery. All three exhibitions will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6, from 5-9 PM at Uptown Gallery, located at 1305 W. Main St. The Docents Show will be on display through September 28, while Places And Faces and Red Dress will be on display through October 26.
Visual Arts Center: Out Of Necessity
This month, Visual Arts Center presents Out Of Necessity, a collection of “Contemporary Ceramic Interventions,” featuring work by Sin-ying Ho, Adam Shiverdecker, Blair Clemo, and more, as well as the Artstream Ceramics Library, a traveling collection of mugs available to be checked out for one week. The exhibit has been open to the public for one week, but has its grand opening on First Friday, September 6, from 6-8 PM at Visual Arts Center, located at 1812 W. Main St. The exhibition will remain on display through October 13.
Brazier Gallery: Interior Life
A Little Bit of History 20″ x 20″ by Larry Moore
Brazier Gallery presents Interior Life, a collection of interiors and still lifes from Brazier Gallery artists. This exhibit will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6 from 6-8 PM at Brazier Gallery, located at 1616 W. Main St. The exhibition will remain on display through October 31.
Bella Baci Gallery: Hello Earthling
Deniz Erçelebi is a self-taught artists with Industrial Design background. Her subjects are usually women and animals in pop-surreal settings. She experiments with traditional techniques as well as digital illustration.
After working as an interactive designer in New York City for six years, she relocated to Richmond, VA where she continues to design and create in her home studio.
Hello Earthling will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6, from 6-9 PM at Bella Baci Gallery, located at 1315 W. Broad St. The exhibition will remain on display through October 2.
Page Bond Gallery: How Do You Know?, Marsh, Acts Of Arrangement
This month, Page Bond Gallery presents three new exhibitions: How Do You Know? by Jere Williams, Marsh by Robin Braun, and Acts Of Arrangement by Pam Sutherland.
Map 111, 2013, Giclee print, Edition of 25, 6 x 36 inches
Jere Williams’s highly conceptual work is informed by his study of philosophy. He makes use of text, sculpture, painting, performance, and also designs contemporary furniture. Much of his work questions established conventions about the way we display, view, and think about art. For example in “Exhibit E” an empty pedestal is surrounded by velvet ropes and a blank plaque stand. There is a coy humor to his “Nothing is Necessary” (2012), which is simply a single phrase repeated in wax crayon on acrylic board. The expression “Nothing is necessary” can be interpreted in a number of ways, and Williams seems content to leave the interpretation to his audience. In some of his works, like “Summary” (2012), words are both the material and the subject: a sea of repetitions of the word “claim” in polyurethane letters, large and small, crowd the surface of the painting. This can be understood in many different ways; in one view, an artwork is the object of many different expectations or demands upon it. Williams is reluctant to answer these questions, but his quietly provocative work expands the viewers’ sense of curiosity and imagination.
Calm Evening Marsh Grass, Northern Neck, VA, 2013, Oil on canvas, 9 x 12 inches
Robin Braun’s quiet, exquisite landscape paintings are shaped by her childhood on the Chesapeake Bay, her studies of Victorian and Old Master landscapes, and time spent around the marshes, bays and waterways of Virginia. She is originally from Annapolis, Maryland, and admits that the ocean is never far from her consciousness. She is best known for her intricate miniature oil paintings that suggest extreme close-ups, painted from a ground-level perspective, observing the drama of insect and plant life. For her September exhibition at Page Bond Gallery, Braun has been working on a new series of paintings of the Hughlett Point Natural Area Preserve on the Virginia Chesapeake Bay. “It’s an area I first saw during a bad storm in 2010. The ghostly shapes of the downed trees along the beach immediately captured my imagination,” writes Braun, who was also drawn to the “clear, glassy water at sunset.” In approaching this series, she had “more ideas than I had time”, so her challenge was deciding what subjects to exclude. Braun’s studies of the Preserve are intimate and detailed, painted on a scale that draws the viewer in, as if they offer a private portal through which to peer onto the bay. Subtle yet stunningly beautiful in their simplicity, Braun’s landscapes reflect the quiet splendor of this area where land and water meet.
Flowerbomb, 2013, Mixed media on panel, 17 1/2 x 17 1/2 inches
Art and life are deeply intertwined in Pam Sutherland’s poignant, highly personal works on paper. Debris, souvenirs, and fragments, or what Sutherland calls “paper evidence” from life finds its way onto her paintings. Dry cleaning tags, metal grommets, a page from a thesaurus, “Melanie’s childhood writing sample,” poetry fragments, thimbles, brochures, collage magazine images, and thread have all been incorporated into Sutherland’s work. With the help of these materials mined from her everyday experience, Sutherland’s paintings commemorate, mourn, and probe both the heartrending and joyful events in her life. When read against the backdrop of her consistently calm and subdued palette, Sutherland’s titles seem startlingly earnest and revealing. In an act of communion with the viewer, anecdotes from the artist’s life are examined and disclosed.
How Do You Know?, Marsh, and Acts Of Arrangement will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6, from 7-9 PM at Page Bond Gallery, located at 1625 W. Main St. The exhibitions will remain on display through September 28.
Reynolds Gallery: Missed Connection
Richard Carlyon, “Emento”, 1996-2000, Acrylic paint and photograph on paper, 19 x 24 inches
This month, Reynolds Gallery presents Missed Connection, a group show in which “artists from 5 different countries visually express the challenges of interpersonal and cross cultural communication.” Featuring the work of Arwa Abouon, John Baldessari, Sanford Biggers, Mel Bochner, Louise Bourgeois, Richard Carlyon, Sonya Clark, Lalla Essaydi, Isca Greenfield-Sanders, Sarah Mizer, Jiha Moon, Kristin Skees, and Zachary Wollard.
Missed Connection will open with a reception on First Friday, September 6, from 7-9 PM at Reynolds Gallery, located at 1514 W. Main St. The exhibition will remain on display through October 12.
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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.
