Once again, it’s First Friday! Once again, I need a name for this article, and nothing obvious comes to mind, so you’re getting a Jay Z joke (a really dumb one, in fact). Sorry everyone!
Once again, it’s First Friday! Once again, I need a name for this article, and nothing obvious comes to mind, so you’re getting a Jay Z joke (a really dumb one, in fact). Sorry everyone! But if you’re holding my Thursday afternoon braindead copywriting steez against me, please don’t extend that ill will to all of the amazing artists who will be displaying their wares this weekend and throughout the month at many of our fine local galleries. My lack of creativity is no reflection on any of them. Find out just how brilliant they all are by scrolling down and learning what is to come this weekend!
Gallery 5: Gallery 5/RVA Magazine 9th Anniversary Event
Ladies and Gentlemen it’s hard to believe Gallery5 and RVA Magazine will be 9 YEARS OLD!
That’s right folks! Waaaaaay back in 2005 a group of artists came together with a yearn to evolve the artistic landscape of Richmond, Virginia by providing a physical space and print hub to showcase the wonderfully diverse creative community that dwells in (and visits) this city. We wanted to build platforms to showcase art of all mediums whether it be visual arts, live music, dancers, actors, avant garde performers, circus, vaudeville, burlesque, djs, poets, comedy, film, free thinkers and everything in between. We wanted to have spaces to wrangle these many circles of creativity into a strong linked chain where the spirit of collaboration could flow and new projects could be born.
We wanted to house existing groups to have events to support their causes. We wanted to host events for all walks of life and break down the barriers of the “creative experience” for everyone to enjoy.
In April of 2005 the oldest standing firehouse in Virginia was reborn as Gallery5 opening its doors with the RVA Magazine Kickoff event. It’s been a long, wild ride and we want to thank all of you for your years of support and involvement. Without you we couldn’t exist. Thank you Richmond!
New visual work by Amanda Robinson, Parker Galore, Bizhan Khodabandeh, Nicholas Crider, Todd Raviotta, Kevin Orlosky, James Robertson, Kim Nario, Ben May, Shawn Saharko, Ian Gamble, and Laura Hernandez. Art on Wheels will be debuting their newly built ballista for the Veteran’s Impact Project! RVA Dance Collective will preform several improv dances! With music from: SLEEPWALKERS, The Blue and The Grey, and Goldrush!
AND back bringing the live street show featuring fire performance, circus and DJ tunes is the Party Liberation Front!
It’s all happening on Friday, April 4, beginning at 7 PM, at Gallery 5, located at 200 W. Marshall St. Art will remain on display through the end of the month.
Ghostprint Gallery: Group Photo
Ghostprint Gallery presents a show of new work by Barrett Gordon, Group Photo.
The title of the show, Group Photo, describes the artist’s raw material: anonymous group photos from the turn of the 20th century that Gordon photographs, enlarges and collages with found objects. He describes this process of replication and removal from the original as “populating the process with free radicals: chance, distortion, mutation.” In this work, Gordon is exploring the creative synergy between the photographer and the photographed, the collective self represented by the group shot and the presence of the lone individual within the group.
Group Photo will premiere with a preview reception on Thursday, April 3, from 6-9 PM, followed by a First Friday reception on Friday, April 4, from 6-9 PM, at Ghostprint Gallery, located at 220 W. Broad St. Art will remain on display through April 26.
Quirk Gallery: (When You Wake) You’re Still In A Dream & Glass Crystal Visions
This month, Quirk Gallery features two new exhibitions: (When You Wake) You’re Still In A Dream, new works by Adam Juresko, in the Shop gallery; and Glass Crystal Visions, new work by Arlie Trowbridge, in the Vault gallery; along with a continuation of Amy Rice’s Be Attitudes exhibition, which premiered in the Main gallery last month.
“A photocopier, some found imagery, a roll of wallpaper and a pair of scissors.”
Quirk is excited to have Adam Juresko’s (When you wake) You’re Still in a Dream show on view in the Shop Show. Juresko, a Richmond artist, is self-taught graphic designer and illustrator specializing in print media.
Using a free form flameworking technique, Arlie Trowbridge transforms borosilicate glass into highly tactile and wearable compositions. Pairing her signature cluster style of meticulous melted droplets with the hardness and structure of faceted crystal forms, Glass Crystal Visions was created with a feeling of awe and bewilderment that often encompasses her while standing in her favorite crystal shop.
Arlie currently lives and works out of her home studio in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in Photography and Film. During her senior year she discovered flameworking while fulfilling an elective credit under the teachings of Emilio Santini. Upon graduation in 2010, she began making glass work under the name Urban Revisions and has since been sold and shown in multiple galleries across the United States including MoMA Design Store, The Honolulu Museum of Art and Pismo Fine Art Glass.
(When You Wake) You’re Still In A Dream and Glass Crystal Visions will premiere with an artist’s reception on Thursday, April 3, from 5-8 PM, followed by a First Friday reception on Friday, April 4, from 5-8 PM. Art will remain on display through April 26.
1708 Gallery: After Party
This month, 1708 Gallery presents After Party, an exhibition of new work by Andrew Kozlowski.
Andrew Kozlowski’s drawings, prints, and installations present a deserted landscape populated with extinct plants, empty beer cans, remnants of environmental ruin, and art supplies. Collapsing hierarchies between intellectual, social and artistic concerns, Kozlowski offers an uncomfortably believable near-future–right after the party got shut down.
After Party opens with a reception on Friday, April 4, from 5-9 PM, with an artist talk at 5:30 PM, at 1708 Gallery, located at 319 W. Broad St. Art will remain on display through May 31.
Richmond Public Library: Male Pattern Boldness, Painted With Light & What The Sea Surrenders
Barbed Wire, Ron Courtney
This month, the Richmond Public Library presents three new exhibitions: Male Pattern Boldness, a collection of abstract oil paintings by Ron Courtney in the Gellham Room; Painted With Light, a collection of color photographs featuring Virginia landscapes by Robert Hunter in Dooley Foyer; and What The Sea Surrenders, a collection of black-and-white photography by Debra Curtis. All three exhibitions will premiere with a First Friday reception on Friday, April 4 from 6:30-9 PM at the Main branch of the Richmond Public Library, located at 101 E. Franklin St. Art will remain on display through June 3.
EDIT Gallery: Grace & Gravity
This month, EDIT Gallery presents Grace And Gravity, a collection of new work by Grace Bomer.
Grace (Carol) Bomer is an abstract expressionist painter whose concern is the human condition surprised by the grace of God. Her work integrates word and image as she explores the mystery of the Incarnation. She believes that art is a form of play before the face of God.
“My paintings begin with a word or phrase or theme often from the Word of God, but also from hymns, books, and the creation itself which “daily pours forth speech,” (Psalm 19). This inspiration may give me a general idea of my painting’s direction, but I also just begin a painting and inspiration happens! Painting is process and Spirit driven. By process I mean I allow my materials and methods along with my design experience to direct my mind and hand as I layer, reveal, add, and subtract elements of art and meaning. This process or archeology creates a history: a history that is developed as God’s Word and Spirit captures my imagination. Both my mind and my heart are as involved as my hand when I attempt to resolve a painting for the glory of God. My work is a combination of oils, graphite, collage elements, and cold wax medium and encaustic medium on canvas or birch panels.” – G. Bomer
Grace And Gravity will open with a reception on Friday, April 4 from 6-9 PM at EDIT Gallery, located at 8 E. Broad St. Art will remain on display through the end of the month.
Art 180: Our Jackson Ward
ART 180 is pleased to announce a new exhibition celebrating our neighborhood, historic Jackson Ward. Teen artists have reimagined the area under the guidance of artists/architects Hamilton Glass and David Marion Green. The exhibition includes drawings, elevations, perspectives, collage, and a scale model of the redesigned neighborhood.
Our Jackson Ward will open with a reception on Friday, April 4, from 6-9 PM, featuring performances at 7 and 8 PM by teens in the Art 180 music and hip hop dance programs, at Atlas: Art 180’s Art Center For Teens, located at 114 W. Marshall St. Art will remain on display through the end of the month.
ADA Gallery: Saf Aleph (Beth)
The title Saf Aleph (Beth) suggests a kind of modus operandi for his artistic practice, as the artist can be found on one hand toppling expectations within media or intermixing genre with subject on the other in his sampling of shape-shifting historical and cultural paradigms everywhere from the specters of Karl Marx to the specters of Minimalism, Color Field Painting, cellular patterning, digital pixelation, Garfield, or any sort of what have you that may be drawn to his attention as imagery or subject matter. His video sculpture pieces hop boundaries not only in terms of genre but also in the way that they contrast and intermix the physicality of sculptural form with the immateriality of projected light, transferring light and moving images onto fixed physical structures, whose presence and fixity are in turn challenged by their relation to the projected imagery and to their sometimes precarious free-standing placements in space. The sharpness of Larson’s imagery and the vividness of his palette brilliantly masks a quiet contrast to the often fleeting nature of his elusive references and the fragile questioning of phenomena and their representation in his work.
Saf Aleph (Beth) will open with a reception on Friday, April 4 from 6-9 PM at ADA Gallery, located at 228 W. Broad St. Art will remain on display through April 26.
Sediment Arts: Sensations
This month, Sediment Arts presents Sensations, “an exhibition of eighty drawings exploring pleasure, touch, pain, and exchange between and within bodies,” featuring work by Nicole Bailey and Bryan Lewis Saunders.
“I chose to exhibit the Sensations drawings for the similarities in perceptions of good sensations between people of different sexes and genders. These drawings show a consenting, loving relationship outside of the porn and television industry, ‘Family Values’ politicians, the Church, evolutionary psychology scenarios, and celebrity paparazzi photos.
As I wasn’t responsible for the concept of illustrating sensations, I used many of my drawings as opportunities to “feel out” myself in space to challenge my body image issues.
The similarities in the sensations between someone who draws himself every day, with clear perception of himself, and someone younger, who avoids mirrors and has had fewer life experiences, is the pleasant, unexpected result.” – Nicole Bailey
“On March 30th 1995 I started drawing at least one self-portrait everyday for the rest of my life. One of the discoveries that emerged from this act was the awareness that every single physical sensation that occurs spontaneously inside my body is to some degree painful. With the exception of ticklish itches on the surface of my skin, I have never had the experience of one of my bones, muscles, joints or internal organs just randomly start emitting feelings of pleasure. The body doesn’t work like that. As a solitary creature my body only creates sensations when it wants to let me know something is wrong. When all is right I feel nothing. That along with the fact that every pain asks me to make sense of it, or take meaning from it, makes pain seem dominant and controlling and yet totally absurd. Positive pleasurable feelings must always take effort and need to be prompted or provoked.
As an intimate social creature things are different and one can easily be overwhelmed by pleasurable sensations inside the body when interacting with a partner. Over a period of several weeks Nicole helped me document this awareness by drawing these sensations ‘in the moment’ (while we were experiencing them) often with beautiful, exciting and playful results.” – Bryan Lewis Saunders
Sensations will open with a reception on Friday, April 4 from 6-9 PM at Sediment Arts, located at 208 E. Grace St. Art will remain on display through the end of the month.
New Normal Apparel: Chasing Chaos
This month, New Normal Apparel presents Chasing Chaos, an exhibition of new work from local artist Jacob Eveland.
My childhood was spent at my grandparents antique shop and playing in the woods and fields around my country home. My experiences and observations during these years have had a great impact on my art. I mesh antiquity, and nature in my writing to reflect my life experiences.–Jacob Eveland
Chasing Chaos will open with a reception on Friday, April 4 from 7-10 PM at New Normal Apparel, located at 212 E. Clay St. Art will remain on display through May 1.
Glave Kocen Gallery: Modern Myths And Metaphors
This month, Glave Kocen Gallery presents Modern Myths And Metaphors: Perspectives on Carnivals, Travels, and the Circus, an exhibition of new work by Benjamin Frey.
“These drawings focus on subjects from the worlds of carnivals, travel, and the circus. The characters and experiences from these worlds are unusual and work as a kind of mythology for the modern age. The circus is one of the last places where we see “monsters” and “heroes” before us and these subjects share the virtue of taking us out of familiar realms and allowing us a new perspective on the world. And yet, as unusual as this world may be it is also a return to a childlike world of adventure and wonder. As Socrates suggested “philosophy begins in wonder” and I want my work to serve not only as icons of uncommon events but also as metaphors for aspects of our lives that we encounter every day.” – Benjamin Frey
Modern Myths And Metaphors opens with a reception on Friday, April 4 from 6-9 PM, followed by a gallery talk on Saturday, April 5 from 11:30 AM-1:30 PM, at Glave Kocen Gallery, located at 1620 W. Main St. Art will remain on display through April 26.
Artemis Gallery: Making Waves
Artemis Gallery presents Making Waves, an exhibition of new work by Judith Schwab.
Judith Schwab is an Environmental Artist whose work has been featured in numerous shows around the world, including the traveling exhibition Woman Collared for Work, which Schwab curated. She has received many awards including the Individual Artist Cultural Arts Award from Broward County, the Delaware Division of the Arts Opportunity Grant in Painting, and the Facilitator James T Doty Award for the International Art for Peace Project. Judith Schwab was also an Honorary Professor at the Xi’an Art School in Xi’an, China. Her work is heavily influenced by the social and environmental conditions of the world.
Making Waves will open with a reception on Friday, April 4 from 5-10 PM at Artemis Gallery, located at 1601 W. Main St. Art will remain on display through April 30.
Uptown Gallery: Cut & Paste
Marti Fann, Concert Under The Stars
Uptown Gallery presents Cut And Paste, a group show by members of the Virginia Collage Society.
Using inspired combinations of paper, paints, recycled items, paper montage and cuttings, members of the Virginia Collage Society are unleashing their creativity at Uptown Gallery. Their exhibit, “Cut and Paste”, destroys traditional boundaries found in painting, drawing and printmaking. This elite group of Richmond artists creates works that range from paper cut-outs to painted, layered papers to found objects in combination with inks, watercolors, acrylics or oils, using paper, plastic or canvas as a support. Affiliated with the National Collage Society, the Virginia Collage Society was founded by Richmond artist Dare Boles in 2003.
Cut And Paste will open with a reception on Friday, April 4 from 5-9 PM at Uptown Gallery, located at 1305 W. Main St. Art will remain on display through May 31.
Visual Arts Center: TIED
Susie Ganch’s exhibit “TIED” will feature the Radical Jewelry Makeover, which educates others on how to create contemporary, innovative jewelry from recycled sources, while also raising awareness of the connection between mining and metalsmithing.
TIED opens with a reception on Friday, April 4 beginning at 5 PM at Visual Arts Center, located at 1812 W. Main St. Work will remain on display through June.
Brazier Gallery: Hang 5
Hang 5 is a group show featuring the work of Loryn Brazier, Beth Marchant, Nancy Mauck, David Tanner, and Tom Wise, which is being presented in conjunction with Historic Garden Week. The exhibition will open with a reception on Friday, April 4, from 6-8:30 PM, at Brazier Gallery, located at 1616 W. Main St. Art will remain on display through April 29.
Page Bond Gallery: VCUArts Fountainhead Fellows
Olivia Valentine, YÜRÜYÜŞ OYASI/ WALKING OYA (Turuncu Boncuklar), 2013-14, Photograph mounted on archival board, Edition 1/3, 8 x 10 inches
Page Bond Gallery is pleased to present, Fountainhead Fellows: Jaydan Moore and Olivia Valentine, a two-person exhibit of artwork created during the artists’ nine-month fellowships in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Craft/Material Studies. Jaydan Moore, Fountainhead Fellow in Jewelry/Metalsmithing, has created a series of objects and investigations his interest on the heirloom. Using the imagery of found silver-plated tableware, he fragments and reassembles these objects into new forms to challenge and commemorate the individual’s ability to designate value to/ his her own valuables and memories. Olivia Valentine, Fountainhead Fellow in the area of Fiber, creates work that explores architectural spaces through large-scale textile installations. Together the fellows’ work represents the next generation of artists thinking through the media and concepts of craft in refreshing ways.
Moore and Valentine were chosen from pool of over 60 applicants from around the nation who have recently received Master of Fine Arts degrees in the field of glass, fiber, metal, ceramics or wood. Sonya Clark, Chair of Craft/Material Studies says, “given the caliber of the applicants, we always find ourselves having a hard time only selecting two fellows each year.” From the west coast, Moore received a BFA in jewelry and metal arts from California College of the Arts and went on to receive his MFA/MA in art from the University of Madison Wisconsin. Prior to receiving the VCUarts Craft/Material Studies Fountainhead Fellowship, he was an artist in resident at Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. Valentine completed her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design before going on to receive her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010. Valentine recently completed a Fulbright Fellowship for Installation Art in Turkey (2012-13).
“The fellowship is an opportunity for the most talented recent graduates from other institutions to mix it up with the Richmond’s incredible art community. They teach alongside the devoted, award-winning artists on our faculty and are mentored for next stages of their art careers,” according to Clark. Fellows receive free housing and studio space provided by Richmond developer, Fountainhead Incorporated; access to the equipment and studios in the Department of Craft and Material Studies; a generous stipend provided by the Windgate Foundation; and an exhibition at one of the top galleries in Richmond.
Fountainhead Fellows: Jaydan Moore and Olivia Valentine will open with a reception on Friday April 4 from 6-9 PM at Page Bond Gallery, located at 1625 W. Main St. Art will remain on display through April 26.
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Artists! Galleries! Would you like your future First Friday events covered in these monthly articles? We might hear about your event anyway, but why leave it to chance? Email your press releases to andrew@rvamag.com.
