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Sparking Conversations: 1708 Gallery’s Billboards Spotlight Social Issues, Civic Participation

David Tran | November 5, 2020

Topics: 1708 Gallery, billboards, Chilalay, Confederate monuments, Earl Mack, Election 2020, Nikko Dennis, police brutality, public art, Wilmer Wilson IV

Two new exhibitions from 1708 Gallery invite guests outside with billboard installations around the city. Artists Wilmer Wilson IV, Earl Mack, and Nikko Dennis hope to spread positivity and start important conversations.

Under the auspices of 1708 Gallery, public art installations by Wilmer Wilson IV and Chilalay founders Nikko Dennis and Earl Mack are currently on display around Richmond, hoping to invoke conversation on themes such as racial injustice, activism, policing, politics, and civil participation.

’til bronze flows through the streets, a billboard series by Richmond-born artist Wilmer Wilson IV, intends to disrupt billboards’ typical role of advertising by using the platforms to display texts and imagery that will initiate discussion about the anti-police brutality protests and other local activism happening around Richmond over the past few months.  

“I hope people will spend time re-imagining our shared institutions from the ground up,” Wilson said via email, “and catching glimpses of the beauty that awaits there, amidst all of the hard work that it will take to truly change how we relate to one another.”

Richmond has been and still is one of the pivotal sites of movements against systemic racism and police brutality. The removal of Confederate monuments, just a few of the many buildings and architectural structures around the city that are rooted in Richmond’s past, has been a discussion over the past summer.

To Wilson, the removal of such monuments falls short of establishing meaningful structural change, and allows systemic racism to silently continue. He wants his billboards to be a starting point for more conversations about this idea.

“Virginia history is one of terror in so many different ways. It’s visible in the very infrastructure of the city of Richmond,” he said. “Intervening onto the infrastructure and the landscape, however small or temporary, felt meaningful, hopefully not just to me but to all whom this place subjugated, and continues to subjugate, to constitute itself.”

The locations of Wilson’s three billboards are no accident either. Wilson said that two of the billboards, which are displayed together on the 200 block of West Grace St and are entirely text, are located across from the Richmond Police Department as an “annotation to or interjection into its existence there.”

The third billboard, located at 21st St and East Broad in Church Hill, is image-based, which Wilson said allows a “more grounded entry point” for conversations surrounding activism and political activity in that residential area, which he notes has recently undergone “fraught social changes.”

Wilmer Wilson IV, ’til bronze flows through the streets, 2020. Billboard, dimensions variable. Photograph by David Hale, courtesy of the Artist and 1708 Gallery.

Bronze and brass are at the core of Wilson’s pieces, two metals that, he said, are historically known for their durability, corrosion resistance, and spark-striking resistance. These copper alloys are used for cultural and utilitarian purposes, and Wilson suggested that in the same way, existing public structures that call to mind, and thereby reinforce, institutional racism can be “melted down” for a better use — perhaps rebuilding our institutions.

The second billboard project 1708 Gallery is currently presenting in Richmond is called SMILE… It was created by Nikko Dennis and Earl Mack, founders of the local design and apparel brand Chilalay.

Driving down Chamberlayne Parkway, drivers and passengers are greeted by a yellow-pink gradient billboard with a reminder to smile. The billboard suggests that a brighter future can be achieved through collective positivity and civil participation, such as voting. Part of the billboard stresses Richmonders to vote for “justice” and “peace” on Nov. 3.

Since the billboard is located in Jackson Ward, it was important for the gallery to make sure the space was occupied by voices within that area, explained 1708 Gallery’s curator, Park Myers. 

“Beyond the incredible importance of the neighborhood, it was important in working with and inviting Chilalay, because of that,” said Myers. “Their entire creative endeavor, their business, where they cultivate their ideas, happens in Jackson Ward.”

Dubbed “Black Wall Street” and “the Harlem of the South,” Jackson Ward has been a historic center for Black entertainment and businesses since the nineteenth century. To this day, the neighborhood remains a cultural hub for Richmond’s Black community.

Both Dennis and Mack are Virginia Commonwealth University alumni. Having launched their Black-owned small business in 2012, their presence in the Jackson Ward neighborhood has been well-established. 

When drivers or pedestrians pass by the billboard, Mack said he wants it to serve a reminder that some things are beyond our control, no matter how hard we try to fix them. “No matter what you’re going through, a smile will last forever,” Mack said.

While planned since before the pandemic began, the billboard installations are part of 1708’s continuous effort during the coronavirus pandemic to hold socially-distanced onsite and offsite exhibitions.

“We’re thinking about how our ambitions to support emerging artists continues in a time when we might not be able to be viewing exhibitions within the gallery space,” Myers said.

‘til bronze flows through the streets is now on view through Dec. 4 on 211 W. Grace St. and at the intersection of North 21st St. and East Broad St. SMILE… can be viewed until Nov. 29 at the intersection of West Jackson St and Chamberlayne Avenue.

Photos by David Tran unless otherwise noted

A Shared Experience

Laura Drummond | September 10, 2020

Topics: 1708 Gallery, Adewale Alli, Asa Jackson, CAN Foundation, Contemporary Arts Network, Hampton Boyer, Julianna Sidiqqi, Mahari Chabwera, Nastassja E. Swift, Park Myers, Primordial Emanations, that which is brought forth follows the womb: a surrender to her luminous blackness

With the newest exhibition at the 1708 Gallery, artists from the Contemporary Arts Network come together to create a transformative experience that is simultaneously solitary and shared.

Submerge yourself into a portal of sensorial stimulation and find yourself transformed by the experience. This is the hope for 1708 Gallery’s latest exhibition, Primordial Emanations, that which is brought forth follows the womb: a surrender to her luminous blackness, which features work by Adewale Alli, Hampton Boyer, Mahari Chabwera, Asa Jackson, Julianna Sidiqqi, and Nastassja E. Swift.

While this exhibition at 1708 Gallery began as a solo opportunity for Mahari Chabwera, it evolved into a shared experience in the wake of recent events, particularly the murder of George Floyd and resulting racial justice protests. “I was in a place where I was feeling like we can do so much more than we do,” Chabwera said. “When we’re given resources or we’re given space, we can spread it out more.”

Chabwera has been an artist in residence at the CAN Foundation as a member of its 2020-2021 Class of the First Patron Initiative, and it felt like a natural shift to extend an invitation to her fellow artists in residence there. “We felt that having just a solo exhibition wasn’t quite adequate for what we were dealing with as a society at large,” said 1708 Gallery curator Park Myers. “It is imperative that we look toward not just collaboration but mutual support in this time, making the necessary changes about how we envision contemporary art exhibitions in independent spaces.” 

Based in Newport News, the CAN Foundation, a non-profit wing of the Contemporary Arts Network (CAN), focuses on artist development, arts education, and public art projects. Its artist residency provides space and support to developing artists in the Hampton Roads area. Since 2015, the CAN has been involved in festivals, artist development exchanges, and exhibitions to bring together artists and patrons and strengthen the arts community. It opened its physical space in August of this year, offering studio space and networking opportunities to members, as well as music recording services, a gallery for displaying work, a classroom for workshops, and more.

This exhibition at the 1708 Gallery not only highlights the work being done by artists in residence at the CAN Foundation, but also raises awareness about the Contemporary Arts Network in general. Asa Jackson and Hampton Boyer, co-directors of the CAN and featured artists in Primordial Emanations, have been pleased with the offer to collaborate and expressed their gratitude to 1708 for the opportunity.

“The reception during these strange times has been really magnificent. I’m overwhelmed with the energy of the time,” said Jackson. Speaking from 1708 Gallery, Boyer said, “On this very street, there are more galleries than in Hampton Roads.”

The CAN is looking to change that, though, and having an audience in Richmond could help. “Richmond has some artistic capital and financial capital that maybe the 757 doesn’t have yet,” Chabwera said. “We needed to be aware of this. Bridges needed to be built. This is an opportunity for that, in a real way.”

1708 Gallery has made way for the artists of the CAN to immerse themselves in the space. The gallery even added the CAN’s name and logo to its own entryway. “It made sense for 1708 as an institution in Richmond to step back,” Myers said. “More than just host the CAN, but really have Mahari lead this group of artists to inhabit and take over 1708 as a space.”

The artists featured in this exhibition had been working independently but sharing studio space at the CAN. The collaborative environment set the tone for mutual learning and a communal experience. “I like to think of the CAN as a multi-faceted institution or community — home, in many ways,” said artist Nastassja Swift. “It feels like a home of many artists, and that’s really exciting to be a part of. This exhibition feels like a continuation of that collective.”

Even though they work in a myriad of mediums — painting, sculpture, textiles, and more — and did not create works specifically to fit a particular theme, the artists found cohesive elements and common threads amongst their work. Their pieces explore healing and self-actualization, femininity and fertilization, and the many facets of Blackness.

“All things come out of darkness,” Jackson said. “Babies in their mothers’ wombs are cultivated in darkness. Plants are cultivated in black soil. The actual universe is completely black. Even when you close your eyes, your thoughts and ideas come out of darkness. All of us can take our origin to blackness in some way.” 

With that in mind, the CAN transformed the 1708 Gallery, creating a black, womb-like portal through which visitors walk before entering the exhibition. This portal initiates a literal and metaphorical passage, cultivating a rich experience of submersion in sights, sounds, and scents. “The experience of being in this space is just as important if not more than the work on the wall,” said Swift. “It isn’t about coming into a gallery to look at beautiful, powerful, or engaging work; it’s about transforming the space to cultivate an experience.” 

The artists hope that by entering through the portal, people will not only cross a threshold into the physical space but also into the depths of their own beings. “This gallery is being treated as a womb,” Swift said. By entering, you are “choosing to metaphorically relive the experience we all have experienced, allowing what you see in this space to affect any part of you that wants to enter out in the world.”

“The art is living art,” Sidiqqi added. “It’s experiential. Each time we have an interaction with something, it creates a new person.” 

It is poignant that an exhibition dedicated to collaboration and mutual support is one that must be experienced on an individual level. This is by design, though, to enhance the overall experience. “Inherent to the exhibition is the need to experience it individually, to give time to listen and slow down within the space,” said Myers. However, the exhibition’s time at 1708 also coincides with a need to limit the number of individuals in the space during a given time, in keeping with COVID-19 safety guidelines. While the coronavirus pandemic has made it difficult for people to find a sense of community and connection, this exhibition offers a unique opportunity to bridge connection through an ultimately solitary experience. 

Primordial Emanations, that which is brought forth follows the womb: a surrender to her luminous blackness is meant to be a transformative experience for viewers, as it has been for the artists themselves. “I hope that as many people can see it as possible, and it creates a lasting impression,” Jackson said. “This moment is something I’ll remember for the rest of my life,” added Boyer. “It’s great to have a team. There’s just love.”  

The exhibition is on view now through October 4, with an opening reception on September 11. Visit 1708 Gallery during its hours of operation (Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday: 1 to 5 p.m.; Thursday 1 to 7 p.m.; Saturday 1 to 4 p.m.) or schedule an appointment to view the exhibition. Online programming, including virtual readings and recitations by Mahari Chabwera, online artist talks, and exhibition walkthroughs, will be available through the 1708 Gallery website and the Contemporary Arts Network website.

All photos by Tristan “Chip” Jackson, Joshua McMahon, and Dionysius Hatch.

More Than a Candle: Sandy Williams IV’s Wax Monuments

Zoe Hall | August 11, 2020

Topics: 1708 Gallery, Jackson Ward Youth Peace Team, Melting Monuments, Reynolds Gallery, Sandy Williams IV, wax candles, wax monuments

Originally inspired by Unite The Right, Sandy Williams IV’s monument candles are more relevant than ever today. Here’s what his was monuments can teach us about monumentalism. Hint: it’s a whole lot more than melting the dudes.

Sandy Williams IV has a new studio, courtesy of the University of Richmond, where he teaches. It’s painted white, with pipes running across the ceiling. “It’s probably one of the better studios I’ve ever had,” he said, a meek smile on his face as his eyes flitted across the room.

Williams’ shelves are stocked with rows of wax monument candles of different colors, each no more than a foot high. He picked up a silicone mold to show me the process, which involves casting a 3D print. It took him a minute to jiggle the statue free.

Williams never planned on becoming an artist, but his plans were thrown into disarray when he was 18. He’d been living the dream — high school prom court, involved in student government, and talented soccer player. His plan was to be an orthodontist, because it paid well. But then he was diagnosed with cancer, and all of that went away. He started to spend most days of the week in the hospital.

“Chemo is a trip. I went from being a normal high-schooler — homecoming court, prom, whatever — to just doing nothing but chemo,” he said. “After chemo I was like, well, how important is that paycheck if I’m not really doing something that matters to me?”

Sandy Williams IV. Photo via Instagram

Williams’ journey as a conceptual artist began at the tail end of his chemotherapy treatment in college at the University of Virginia. He took his first art class, an observational drawing class, to fulfill a credit requirement for school. 

“It really became this supportive community that I was missing,” said Williams, who was at the time used to 300-person Biology lectures. “I went from that situation to meeting daily with this professor who knew my name and knew my story, and was really invested in helping me get better.”

His early, more introspective work involved sitting in front of a camera for hours as the white balance struggled to even out his complexion. Now, in his words, “the lens has turned the other way.” His wax monuments are one of several projects meant to start a conversation about people on pedestals, and are years in the making. It all began with the Unite the Right Rally in 2017.

At the time, Williams was living in Charlottesville, and preparing to move away. “I was on my way to work actually – I was working as a waiter – and this truck of men with Confederate and Nazi flags drove by me and all threw Nazi salutes at me,” he said. “I was like, ‘I gotta get out of here.’” The right-wing rally took place at the Lee statue in Charlottesville, a familiar spot to Williams and his friends. Soon afterward, he departed for Richmond with monuments on the mind. 

In his first year as a Sculpture grad student at VCUarts, the air was just right for discussion. “We were doing tons of readings about monuments throughout history, what happened in South Africa and apartheid and what they did with their monuments, and so I decided to keep pushing it,” Williams said. 

It’s a weird feeling to look at tiny versions of these grandiose objects. In an interview with the Reynolds Gallery, Williams said that his monument candles are an opportunity to meditate on what the symbolism of the actual monument means to us. Or — for those who’ve contemplated enough and are ready to see the statue gone — to feel the relief of regeneration.

To make them, Williams starts with a 3D scan. Scans of monuments are out there; Williams explains that there are a couple of different foundations around Richmond that have been doing archival scanning of monuments. However, he said, “sometimes they’re not so interested in sharing them,” at which point he has to turn to the internet, or even do the scans himself.

Once he has a scan, he uses the materials available to him at VCUarts and the University of Richmond to make a 3D print, which he then casts in a mold. When the mold is ready, he pours wax into the negative space to make a candle.

The first candle Williams ever made was the easy-to-scan Jefferson monument, as seen on the UVA campus. Then, taking a slight departure from Confederate generals, he made a Lincoln. This choice, he explained, was to expand the depths of his message. “Especially within the setting of an art gallery, it was a very left-thinking conversation, when my intention was more radical than that. It wasn’t just about ‘melt the racist monuments.’” 

Williams felt that the typical art-world conversation about monuments needed to be widened in scope. “The conversation was getting simplified or flattened,” he said. “It was a missed opportunity to have real conversations about changing the infrastructure of the system, not just who sits on the pedestal, but really why we’re building these giant pedestals to people who aren’t here anymore when there’s so many people that need that space.”

When it comes to the subject of memorialization, Williams’ practice isn’t limited to his monument candles. One of the ways in which he explored this idea was in his cleaning of the Statue of Liberty monument in Chimborazo Park earlier this year. Like many of Williams’ pieces, it had a simple exterior that contained a much more complex project. 

“It wasn’t even a Confederate statue. It was this random Statue of Liberty that was put there by the Boy Scouts of the Robert E. Lee [Council] in the fifties, during segregation, in Chimborazo Park, which is this memorial to the largest Confederate hospital during the Civil War,” he said. “Right after the Civil War, it was a freedman community. But there’s not a single sign commemorating that activity, right? All of the signs are just about the importance of the space to the Confederacy, but it totally washes away the history of the fact that after the Civil War, hundreds of freed slaves lived there before the city evicted them. The city was doing things like buying people one-way tickets to Chicago and Philadelphia, just to push those people out of the city.”

His idea was to invite people to, in a way, introduce themselves to the statue. Touch it, change it, care for it. In doing so, they would “activate” the statue. This process can be empowering to those who feel helpless against tradition, and it provides an opportunity to reflect on what the statue means to us while performing a public service. At least, that’s the hope.

There were complaints. Two or three times a day, a voice called up to Williams from the sidewalk, worried he might damage its natural patina. “Mind you, I got permission from the city,” he said. “I got permission from the police department, I got permission from parks and rec, so I was very much allowed to be doing what I was doing.” 

Nonetheless, he went ahead and explained what he was doing to those who stopped and questioned it. “I still felt it was important to have those conversations,” he said. “And now, in what they are considering a crisis situation, they’re like, ‘All right, we’ll just take [the Confederate statues] down.”

While Williams supports the removal of the monuments, he doesn’t want the complexity of their impact to be overlooked.  

“It’s so much deeper than just the statue. It’s a thirty-foot symbol of the racial inequality that’s existed in this country since forever,” he said. “Lee is just the biggest symbol. It’s in murals all over the place; it’s in pictures in restaurants. The more I worked on it, the more I started to notice — it’s just everywhere. It’s become such a representation of what Richmond is. And I think a lot of people are tired of being represented in such a way.”

Making monuments is only half the battle, though. To take full advantage of their artistic potential, Williams likes to melt his wax monuments in front of their originals. Considering it’s illegal to perform any kind of demonstration in front of monuments, this has been a bit of an obstacle for Williams at times. When he attempted to melt his Lincoln statue at Washington DC’s Lincoln memorial, Williams approached the guard. “He was very nice about it. He was like, ‘Somebody’s gonna call me in about 15 minutes to say that you’re doing something, and after that I’ll give you ten more minutes to finish your project before I tell you you need to leave.’ So I was like. ‘Okay, right on — we’ve got 30 minutes.’”

In Richmond these days, though, such complicated negotiations may no longer be necessary in the fight to deconstruct such symbols. “Now when you see people setting up PA systems on the Lee, and so many different voices get projected around the area, that’s totally the conversation that I was interested in pushing, that all of a sudden is very much the reality of the situation,” he said. “It went from being like, ‘Ah how do you push these conversations?’ to… ‘I don’t even need to do that work anymore, it’s just happening.’”

Seeing this change occur means a lot to Williams. “Just thinking about the ways in which those spaces are so inaccessible… unemancipated is another word I’ve been using,” he said. “When you look at what the Lee monument had going for it before the uprising started… and now, the life that exists around it, the activity. I think that really encapsulates what this project meant for me when I started it in 2017.”

Back when Williams started making art in college, his professors made it very clear that fine art is not a lucrative path. They told him he’d spend ten years a student, ten years as an emerging artist, twenty years as an established artist, and then maybe become famous. 

“And I was like, ‘Jeez, I should’ve gone to med school! It’d only be 8 years,” he said. “But it works out in its own ways, even if it’s not going to be selling your work for millions of dollars. There’s so much else you can get out of it. Monetarily, it’s definitely a struggle… I get rejected from things I don’t even remember applying to, just because I’m applying so often to things. Whatever it is, I’m throwing my name in the hat. It’s just part of the grind, part of the practice.”

Williams moves with patience. At one point, when I asked if he had enough time to finish the interview, he said he had plenty. He was just planning on working in the studio that day.

“Making it was never a concern of mine. If I die next year, I will have at least left marks of my being,” he said. “I think building this foundation on my work being important to me, first and foremost, before any outside recognition, that’s how I’ve been able to persist for so long. Even with this candle project.” 

Clearly, his continued work has paid off. When he got started, nobody wanted to buy a candle for $20. Now, he’s working with 1708 Gallery to raise thousands of dollars for the Jackson Ward Youth Peace Team through sales of his wax monuments. As of right now, all of them are sold out.

You can check out the full collection of Sandy Williams IV’s wax monuments on his website.

Top Photo courtesy Reynolds Gallery

Considering Safety And Accountability at InLight Richmond

Noah Daboul | July 27, 2020

Topics: 1708 Gallery, black lives matter, covid 19, InLight Richmond, Park Myers, Wesley Taylor

In light of the ongoing risk from the COVID-19 pandemic, 1708 Gallery has decided to hold this year’s InLight Richmond exhibition in multiple locations across Richmond, and has picked a theme of “Safety and Accountability.”

1708 Gallery has been an institution in Richmond for more than four decades. Their annual fall public exhibition, InLight Richmond, has been an event Richmonders can look forward to for 13 years so far, and hopefully many more. However, this year’s InLight poses challenges that 1708 has not had to face before. 

“This year’s will be different because it will be distributed across sites all over the city,” said 1708 curator Park Myers, “It’s much more decentralized.”

Myers also said this year they will be working more closely with community groups than they have in years prior.

“This came from the requirement and necessity of social distancing because of COVID, and eventually thinking about how to decentralize the event,” said InLight guest curator Wesley Taylor. “From crowd control — how it’s historically been — we’ve only had one place where we’ve needed to manage crowds; safety and health, too. This way allows for people to passively engage with the work, without having to be at one place with a lot of people. The idea for multiple sites also means multiple communities.”

“In past years when it’s been in one location, we work with that community; those neighbors and residents within that place. Since this year [InLight] is spread all over the city, we wanted to make sure that we are keeping ourselves accountable for all of the communities we’d be entering into,” said Myers. “We don’t want to just parachute in and set up. We’d rather work with the communities, have a dialogue, and work from the ground up.”

This year’s InLight theme is ‘Safety and Accountability.’ Taylor and Myers said that there had originally been a plan for InLight Richmond 2020 at a specific site; but in response to COVID-19 and the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests, everything had to be revamped.

“We came to terms with what was happening,” said Taylor. “Usually the site is the theme and we invite artists to respond to the place. This year, because we don’t have the same approach and don’t have the theme of the place, we decided to come up with something to ground the artists and give them something to think about. Safety and accountability has a lot to do with the confluence of all these world events. It’s not a necessity for an artist to respond directly to these world events, but it’s more of a theme for them to be inspired by.”

“Safety and accountability are important as a thematic intention, but we’re looking towards thinking about them in a lot of different ways,” said Myers. “Things like social safety, political safety, accountability in the sense of personal or social accountability, or institutional accountability. For us, when you think about these quite horrific world events, it’s important to realize how interdependent we are on one another.”

Taylor said that although things like COVID and Black Lives Matter are important, 1708 doesn’t want to put artists into a box of only thinking about these things. They want artists to interpret the theme of “Safety and Accountability” in their own natural way. 

“Between Park and I, there was no way we could have a public exhibition and not think about these things,” said Taylor. “It’s an outlet for people to express themselves and feel right doing so. You can take certain interpretations of safety and accountability. We’re thinking about this idea of police and policing at a community level, and I think people can express that in their work.”

However, there are many other ways to intepret the theme beyond the current events we’re all experiencing, and Taylor hopes the artists involved will explore all of the different possibilities available to them.

“I think we’re talking about the idea of safety nets, resources, and coming together in emergencies,” Taylor said. “Safety and accountability can be for the future, too. When you’re talking about Black Lives Matter or COVID, these are things that InLight still decided to move forward with despite them happening. This is because of the idea of exhibition. Exhibition and space has been put on hold for a long time, and for these things to be present at an exhibition that people actually go to, it may be one of the rarest times that people have a response to these things in real time.”

“Giving artists this platform and the ability to discuss these things with communities is important,” he said. 

1708 Gallery is still in the process of picking the sites for this year’s InLight Richmond, and applications are still open. They said once they receive responses from sites and artists, the final decisions will start to be made. Taylor said that they want the sites they choose to be interesting. They want communities to speak up and present a site that isn’t expected and has a lot of significance to the community.

“We’ll give a lot of credence to that — see how that can work, and see how we can put the right resources and artists together,” said Taylor. “We want to see how these spaces and venues transform during InLight.”

In the past, 1708 has put out an open call to artists to apply. This year, there are three different open calls for three different categories. There is one for artists, one for community groups, and one for stewards of sites. The application process for artists is similar to a traditional arts proposal, said Myers. 1708 is encouraging artists to submit their work, information about themselves, etc. to be considered for this year’s InLight. They say that because it is at multiple sites they want to see how artists can work in a serial manner and have pieces at different locations. The deadline to apply is Friday, August 7 at midnight. 

“There are things we are encouraging folks to respond to,” said Myers. “We want artists to consider the theme, but this has also historically been an outdoor exhibition. We want artists to consider the media they’ll be using. It’s called ‘InLight’ because it’s normally a light exhibition, although I can unequivocally say that it’s grown to include performance, film, video, screenings, and a whole myriad of different media.”

This year’s InLight Richmond will be held from November 12 to 16. Due to the use of multiple locations, 1708 decided to expand the length of the exhibition beyond its usual two-day weekend presentation. The gallery is looking forward to presenting a variety of great artworks in memorable locations, and is urging Richmonders to submit proposals for possible sites. They are also encouraging artists to submit their work and are very eager to see submissions.

“We’re thinking about the reverberation of an event like that[InLight Richmond] being placed somewhere [unexpected],” said Taylor, “so there will be a conversation or ongoing resources, and shed new light on new artists, places, and communities that Richmond hasn’t been thinking about.”

If you’ve got a proposal for this year’s InLight Richmond exhibition, submit an application at 1708 Gallery’s website.

Top Photo: Josh Rodenberg and Russell White, TechnoCosmica, InLight 2017, photo by Zephyr Sheedy, via 1708 Gallery

Virtual Art

Zach Armstrong | April 24, 2020

Topics: 1708 Gallery, Art At A Distance, Art Works, coronavirus, covid 19, ed trask, Glave Kocen Gallery, Matt Lively, Richmond Culture Works

With social distancing making art shows a thing of the past for now, Richmond’s artists and galleries are finding new ways to reach the outside world.

“Our artists do have access to their private workspaces to make art but it’s a lot quieter in the art center now,” said Glenda Kotchish, owner of Art Works Inc. “We now have one person in the office to answer the phone, emails and meet people provided they have made an appointment. It’s definitely social distancing.”

Art Works Inc, an art center located in the Manchester district of Richmond, joins exhibits and studios around the world who now must do what the artists who have filled their galleries have always done with their work: think outside the box and get creative. 

The entertainment industry has been crushed thanks to social distancing measures halting the ability to hold an audience. Concerts, movie theatres, and festivals are being put on hold, in addition to art exhibits — and Richmond, no stranger to the arts, is being affected. 

Richmond has been ranked the most artistic mid-sized city in America thanks to the number of museums, art galleries, art schools, art supply stores, and performing arts venues in town. Community engagement in the arts can be attributed to VCU’s Arts School, commonly recognized as one of the top public arts education programs in the nation.

Art by Michael-Birch Pierce. Image via 1708 Gallery/Facebook

The art studios, galleries, and exhibits of RVA are more than up to the task of continuing to operate in a way that’s compatible with stay-at-home orders. Around town, a number of new alternatives to the old way of doing things have cropped up this month.

Beginning April 24., the Glave Kocen Gallery will begin experimenting with a virtual exhibit featuring prominent local artists Matt Lively and Ed Trask, known for their murals painted on the sides of buildings. 

“We’re trying to give people normalcy, knowing that these artists are still creating new work and there’s still hopefulness these guys show in their pieces,” said BJ Kocen, owner and director of Glave Kocen Gallery. 

The virtual exhibit will run until May 15 and will feature Zoom interviews with the artists, as well as videos, photos, articles, and live shots. The art gallery is also considering uploading comedic skits on their website, with premises such as people who only come to art exhibits to eat cheese, or a husband and wife having a dispute over a painting. 

“When I saw Stephen Colbert wearing a suit and tie from his house, I thought that was a nice gesture that says, ‘Hey I’m still here and I’m still at it’,” said Kocen. “So that may resonate for people who could support Matt and Ed.”

Art Works Inc will be launching “Art at a Distance: American life in isolation,” on digital display from April 24 through May 17. Art submitted to the gallery will be curated and put together into a film posted on its website. Prizes will also be awarded to artists on the first day of the exhibit.

“This situation has caused us to rethink how we do things and has forced us to be creative and to improvise,” said Kotchish. “We plan on weathering the storm, much the same as for the 2008 recession. Our staff is small but we have powerful imaginations and a willingness to try new things.”

Image via Art Works Richmond/Facebook

Artworks curated at these virtual exhibits are still available for purchase through the galleries’ websites. Donations can also be made by those who wish to support local galleries in various ways. Art Works Inc and Glave Kocen Gallery have so far had no luck applying for government relief.

“We asked the City of Richmond to defer the upcoming property tax payment, but have not had a response. Many of the surrounding counties have done this for small business, but the City of Richmond hasn’t,” said Kotshich. “They offered the opportunity to apply for a low-interest loan, but we looked into that and the paperwork was overwhelming,”

Galleries and supporters of local art have been working to make aid available to individual artists during this time; according to 1708 Gallery’s website, $40,000 has been raised for the COVID-19 Arts & Culture Relief Fund, which provides artists in the Richmond region with a one-time $500 grant. The Fund is designed to help compensate for lost work and to help with basic living expenses.

To apply for the relief fund, call (804) 353-0094 or visit richmondcultureworks.org. One can donate to the relief fund on its Gofundme page.

1708 Gallery has also launched a program called Space Grant 1708, which will offer temporary relief to artists who have lost studio space. The grants will give artists the opportunity to use 1708’s gallery as a studio space, as well as to display work in the 1708 storefront along West Broad St.

“While we cannot currently be the hub for artistic engagement in person, we can still be the hub for artistic innovation,” the gallery said in a statement on their website.

Top Photo via Glave Kocen Gallery/Facebook

Two Sides Of The Craft

Oliver Mendoza | July 24, 2019

Topics: 1708 Gallery, A Measure Of Life, Cindy Neuschwander, Jay Barrows, Reynolds Gallery, What were you after then? What are you after now?

Two posthumous retrospectives of Richmond artist Cindy Neuschwander’s work co-operate to show the way art evolves over the course of an artist’s life.

The late Richmond artist Cindy Neuschwander is taking over the art scene this summer with two posthumous exhibitions at 1708 Gallery and Reynolds Gallery. Neuschwander, who passed away in 2012, was a Richmond native and graduated from VCU in 1986. The two exhibitions of her work that are currently on display represent two different phases of her artistic life. Her art is often identified with minimalism and abstract expressionism, but once you see her work, you’ll realize these labels alone don’t do it justice.

Image via 1708 Gallery/Twitter

Opened on July 5, the exhibition at 1708 Gallery, What were you after then? What are you after now? has pieces from Neuschwander’s earlier work, created between 1984 and 1990. The exhibition mostly features photographic collages, text, painting, and scraffito, a technique that involves scratching away at paint or plaster to reveal a hidden lower layer.

On June 13, Reynolds Gallery also opened a Cindy Neuschwander exhibition, A Measure of Life. The exhibition contains some of Neuschwander’s later work, dating from 1999 to 2010. Some of the pieces are part of the private collection that was left to her husband and art dealer, Jay Barrows, after her passing. Some of the pieces at Reynolds Gallery have yet to be seen by the public. 

Image via 1708 Gallery/Twitter

According to Park Myers, the curator at 1708 Gallery, there are some stylistic connections and mark-making present in Neuschwander’s early work that she carried through into the later work that’s on display at Reynolds. There is a lot of emphasis on eyes in the images, as well as a focus on couples, whether it be significant others or a mother and daughter. Some works seem to deliberately shroud or mask body parts such as arms or legs.

“Some are more jubilant or about an intense relationship, and they are met with the same level of color saturation, mark-making and scraffito,” said Myers. “What’s interesting is the way she begins to abstract the figure in these early works, but still includes the actual figure.”

In other works, these body parts are more abstract. The works disconnect these appendages, making them seem more like geometric shapes than any part of a human body. “When you’re deciding to hide certain parts of the body, it involves a certain type of psychology and identity representation,” Myers said. “When she tries to either hide something or expose something, she’s making psychology that is very internal to the work itself, or speaking outwardly to the viewer.”

Swelling Clusters, 2009, oil and wax on panel, 16 x 16 x 3 inches (via Reynolds Gallery)

There are clear differences between the pieces at 1708 Gallery and the newer work on display at Reynolds. By the time of her later work, her art had become more abstract and minimalist. A Measure of Life also introducing Neuschwander’s work with encaustic painting, a mixed-media technique that involves using heated beeswax to which colored pigments have been added. Due to its temperature, the beeswax can be manipulated in a variety of ways — shaped, etched, or even removed to leave a shadow of its presence behind.

While Neuschwander’s art varies between the differing periods on display at the two galleries, there is a clear connection between her stylistic choices in the different eras. One can even see some of the recurring themes or patterns from her early works showing up in new ways in her later work.

“You can feel the several distinct series and periods that she was working in,” said Julia Monroe, co-director at Reynolds Gallery. “Some works are geometric, some are encaustic.”

Coda (blue green), 2012, oil and wax on canvas, 6 x 6 inches (via Reynolds Gallery)

Some of the earliest works in the 1708 Gallery show date back to Neuschwander’s college days. Meanwhile, “The Couple,” a self-portrait of Neuschwander and Barrows together that is included in Reynolds Gallery exhibition, is one of the last pieces she worked on before her passing. When viewed as a whole, the work provides a detailed picture of Neuschwander’s life as an artist, and helps demonstrate the themes and objects that were most important to her throughout her life.

What were you after then? What are you after now? is currently on display at 1708 Gallery, located at 319 W. Broad St in the Arts District. It will remain on display through August 18.

A Measure Of Life is currently on display at Reynolds Gallery, located at 1514 W. Main St in the Fan. It will remain on display through August 23.

Top Image via 1708 Gallery/Twitter

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