Every Friday night, RVA Mag drops one scorcher of a playlist curated by Virginia’s most influential artists, musicians, and institutions. This week, Hampton Roads’ killer duo, Sunny & Gabe, brings you a playlist worthy of the hurricane that never was; a curated gallery of music, sounds, and experiments that is as worthy of your nocturnal exploits, as it is your daytime recovery.
Don’t hold back this weekend, Virginia.
Music Sponsored By Graduate Richmond
Richmond abstract painter Christina Wingchow‘s impeccable use of color and hypnotic sense of dimension is what first drew RVA Mag to her artwork. The artist has grown from painting for fun in high school to majoring in paint and printmaking at VCU, to helping to launch the Endeavor RVA gallery, to exhibiting at Virginia MOCA. And now, Wingchow has just premiered her first solo exhibit, “FLUX,” at Artspace Richmond.
Opening at the end of August, the colorful show is full of nature motifs and flowing movement. The abstract and figurative works feature what looks like anthropomorphic dew droplets living in a cotton-candy underworld. Looking at Wingchow’s work is like reaching into the drain that leads to the Upside Down in “Stranger Things” — if the “Upside Down” got a Candyland makeover that was splattered on canvas and wood. Her artwork, consisting of a menagerie of vibrant eye-popping blobs, swirling colors, and shape-shifting creatures, are all influenced by nature, energy, magic, and dreams.
“Everything around us is constantly moving and changing. My fascination in this natural state expressed itself in my work long before I consciously acknowledged it. I paint intuitively, and improvisation is key,” Wingchow said in a statement about her art. “It is inspired by movement, and driven by weird thoughts, restless energy, and the need for free play,”
Wingchow has made a habit of doing some kind of art every day, whether it be drawing, painting, or writing about her work. She urges other aspiring artists to take the advice she had to remind herself at the beginning of her career, “Remember, this is what you want to do. Make sure you make time for it.”
“All artists go through struggles and difficulty in figuring out what they really want to do or explore since there’s only so much time you get,” said Wingchow. “The most important thing is trying different things. And, of course, continuing to do it.”
“Flux” will be on display at Artspace Richmond, located at 31 E. 3rd St., until Sept. 23. You can follow Wingchow’s Instagram, @wing.chow, to keep up to date on her latest projects.
All Photos Courtesy of Wingchow. Top Image: “Caretaker”
“It’s sort of my mission in life to empower women in the arts,” Nico Cathcart said, dressed in her paint covered jeans and plaid shirt, fresh out of working on her latest mural.
It’s an honest goal to want to use your platform to help elevate others in the margins. Richmond’s art scene is bursting at the seams with artists of different mediums, creating diverse and beautiful works across the city in galleries and on the side of buildings. But even in a city with a top arts school, the newly opened ICA, and an abundance of art galleries hosting exhibitions, it still can be a challenge for women and minority artists to have their talent appreciated and supported.
“Sometimes I’m the only woman on the bill…people aren’t taking the extra step to get outside the boy’s club,” said Cathcart, a local muralist and sign maker.
So, in an effort to lift up and highlight female artists, Cathcart worked with Gallery5 to put together the “Glitter and Grit” exhibit opening this Friday. At first, the gallery approached her about doing a solo show, but the artist had a much bigger idea in mind.
“I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to gather female artists who were strong artistically, with strong voices and get them all in the same room,” she said.
Over 10 artists with mediums ranging from graffiti to abstract to drawings are featured. And while their styles differ, the one factor that ties them together is their connection in trying to navigate the male-dominated art world.
For many of the artists, it’s not about putting men down—it’s about creating a space for female artists to thrive where their art and voices are front and center.
“I think it’s very important for women to have the lens in the art world,” said Amelia Blair Langford, a fellow Richmond artist who is among those participating.
Many of the artists took the opportunity to make something meaningful that may not be feminine in nature.
Artist Kate Duffy has been working on a piece called “Trail Eyes” for the exhibit. It focuses on being outdoors, playing outside as a kid, and getting down and dirty with bugs and picking flowers.
“I keep joking with friends that I’m not bringing any glitter I’m only bringing the grit,” she said. “I think it’s cool for Nico to curate this, but then also trust us to create whatever we want because she respects us as artists. It’s important for us [women] to network with each other to help each other get opportunities.”
For some of the artists like Duffy, finding confidence in their work and finding a voice was a major challenge to overcome.
“I wasn’t taught to advocate for myself and take up space and to take what was mine,” Duffy said. “We teach our young men, and society is shifting, but that this is their world and it’s for them so they take these opportunities. For some young women, it can be difficult finding that confidence and taking what is yours.”
Shaylen Broughton, a local abstract artist who uses acrylic paints and ocean water to create her fluid artwork, is also on the bill. The “Undercurrent” artist echoed similar sentiments as Duffy on the male-dominated art scene.
“People tend to think that the men, especially with mural art, are better cause they’re stronger or more capable. I think it’s important to push that away and highlight female artists to show that we can do just as good if not better,” she said. Broughton will showcase her bright, colorful, and electric art on canvas alongside Amy Smith Marie, Andrea Owens, Austin Miles, Chelsi Fiore, Lucky Signs, Nikki Leone, and Meme.
Miles, a local painter, tends to focus her work on women of color and stressed the importance of representation in art.
“It’s interesting when you’re in a show with a group of artists and notice you are one of a few women or one of two black artists,” she said. “But it’s also a proud moment when I’m able to enter this space, what I’m doing is paving a way for other artists.”
Most of the participating artists are based out of Richmond, but Meme hails from the West Coast. The Northern California graffiti artist and skateboarder found there weren’t many females involved in street art or skating. Meme helped form Few & Far, a movement that brings together creative women involved in various forms of art.
“I wanted to be more about what I can contribute to society, more than just taking for myself,” Meme said.
Like Cathcart, the two artists who hail from different backgrounds, have used their platforms to expand the network of women they work with and put more female artists on the map.
“I had a guy say to me that feminine art isn’t serious and guys won’t respect that—it made me really angry,” Cathcart said. “Women are powerful and create life. I get called a ‘bitch’ because I call out sexism and racism, but it’s important for people to question why an art show has no women or only one female artist. It’s normal to have a show with a bunch of guys. Question that.”
“Glitter and Grit” opens this Fri., at Gallery5 at 7 pm. In addition to the art showcase, check out music from Georgie Isaacs, Dani Nelson and Chris Smith, Shangri Lords, and Adar. Gallery5 will have a market with fellow vendors Dag Nab it, The Raw Aura, Eliza Jane Prints
Lebow’s Art & Design, Caroline Seaman Resin Art & Jewelry, and Gold Star Vintage.
Top photo: Amelia Blair Langford
This September, a nationally-recognized exhibit is coming to the Virginia Holocaust Museum to start a conversation on which lives depend. “Break Glass: The Art of V.L. Cox – A Conversation to End Hate“ is a striking collection of found-object sculptures meant to shape a timely narrative about civil rights and equality.
“Discrimination never stops with one group, that has been my message since day one,” said Cox, an Arkansas native. “If you allow one group to be dehumanized and treated as second-class citizens then it will automatically bleed over into others. Discrimination is like a virus, it spreads.”
From the series of doors once installed on the Lincoln Memorial steps to protest a discriminatory Arkansas religious freedom bill, to an original 95-year-old bloodstained Klan Robe, the works offer a cathartic commentary of the discrimination and prejudice that plagues American southern culture.
After seeing the exhibit at the Longwood Center for the Visual Arts, VHM’s director of education Megan Ferenczy knew immediately the works would be invaluable installations in Richmond’s museum.
“This is really relevant to what we do here,” said Ferenczy. “It doesn’t necessarily focus on the Holocaust, but it focuses on the larger issues of discrimination, intolerance, and hatred in our own country.”
Ferenczy explained that most importantly, the works create a conversation that is crucial to the ignition of positive progress. Although many of the works aren’t directly commenting on the treatment of the Jewish population in America, they further an essential dialogue in a space where creating conversation is the mission.
“The purpose of it is to confront this legacy of racism,” said Angela Rueda, assistant curator at the VHM. “It’s shining a light on this legacy, where hate and bigotry hides, and then using that as a platform to start a conversation…to create a space where people can confront this and…reach a place of civility.”
Many of the pieces are massive, like lifesize hooded figures, columns, and doors. “You enter the space and you’re immediately confronted with it,” said Rueda. Superficially, many of the pieces present messages that feel at odds with the space–like the gut punch of walking into a room and coming face to face with a Klan member–but deeper reflection reveals the stark juxtaposition of the intended use of these objects, and the way they are being offered to the exhibit’s audience.
Closer examination of each piece unveils hidden messages that, even when subtler than the iconic imagery of the white hood, still hits just as hard. For example, a mixed-media American flag–”Stained”– is actually created from pages of the Bible, ripped from their binding to represent the harm done when these verses are torn from context and used to oppress others.
Cox worked with ministers of different denominations when creating this piece, careful to tell her story, but to include the voices of others as well. “People rip pages out of the Bible every single day to harm others, you’re taking them out to show them that that’s wrong,” said Cox.
Rueda posited that while most people entering the museum are ready to face the atrocities of the Holocaust, they are not always ready to turn their eye inward on our own country, and the current perpetuation of hate and injustice in America today.
“This stuff is in our backyard. It’s right here in our state,” said Rueda, a fact made apparent by the recent one-year anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in August. Despite declarations of progress and advancement, white supremacists and fascists were more empowered than ever to hoist their Nazi-ideologies sans hood, and revive World War II era anti-semitic chants, like Nazi slogan “blood and soil.” It’s vital to confront these issues as a current national epidemic, and not arbitrarily confine them to a past that isn’t so long gone.
“It all starts with conversation,” said Cox. “People don’t talk to each other anymore. We communicate behind keyboards, and behind cell phones. It’s important that we get to know each other again.”
According to Cox, the best way to do that is through art. “You can look at something and you’re impacted by it,” she said. “You see it, feel it, it moves you. It communicates something to you, and that’s been going on since the beginning of time.”
“When archeologists do a dig in an ancient civilization, the first thing they look for are objects. They look for murals, they look for mosaics, they look for hand carved tools. That’s what tells them about this society, this civilization,” said Cox. “The arts are very powerful.”
Works like this help create the language future historians will use to understand our culture, but more importantly, it’s inserting that language into our current narrative. Through her work, Cox provides a context that can begin to change minds–even those as deeply rooted in Southern culture as rural Arkansas, or as historically chained to toxic narratives as our own former capital of the Confederacy.
Cox is from deep in the Bible Belt, where miscommunication, isolation, and misconception are to blame for much of the area’s deeply intolerant rhetoric. Arkansas has only 70 percent broadband access, Cox explained, and much of south Arkansas lacks cell phone service. The ability to surf the web is a luxury not everyone can afford. “Sometimes messages get cherry-picked, twisted, and turned around to be a misleading statement, and then it’s spread into the population.”
That makes the circulation of intelligent and thoughtful conversation critical, and is part of the reason why Break Glass is presented hand-in-hand with a number of educational components and opportunities.
The VHM is holding a professional development workshop for teachers to give educators the resources they need to have difficult and essential conversations with their students. “It empowers teachers and gives them the tools to have these conversations,” said Ferenczy. “If these conversations aren’t happening in the classroom, then where can they be had?”
They also invited reformed former skinhead Christian Picciolini to speak at the museum on Oct. 17, presenting to students, then later in the evening to the public. Once a leader of an American white power organization in Chicago, he is now the co-founder of a non-profit peace advocacy organization who works to get others out of a life of violent extremism.
Education is crucial to break the cycle of ignorance. Though it would be easier if our history remained rooted in the past, the cyclical nature of prejudice guarantees the repetition of inequality if a dialogue is never created.
“The arts step up in times of need, in dark times,” said Cox. “They play a powerful role in our society in reaching across boundaries and bringing about change.”
For some, the Holocaust is ongoing, and it’s only through conversations like those created by Break Glass that we can shatter the established national narrative.
“There really isn’t ever an end to the Holocaust, is there? Yes, maybe we hold people accountable, and maybe justice in some legal sense is served, but for Holocaust survivors, the Holocaust is still going on, for their children it’s still happening,” said Ferenczy. “This hatred still exists, it never went away.”
Break Glass opens on Sept. 28 and will run through Feb. 11 at the Virginia Holocaust Museum. Admission is free and open to the public.
Photos Courtesy of V.L. Cox. Top Image: “Soiled” A 1920 (95-year-old) bloodstained Klan robe installation. The robe was kept intact, and Vox purchased the vintage metal signage to show the true level of hatred this robe and installation represents.
A handful of Richmond artists will be creating murals inspired by the history of Virginia – and you’ll be able to see the mural-making process live and on-site.
“Fresh Paint: Murals Inspired by the Story of Virginia” intertwines Richmond history with street art, as muralists take inspiration from the Virginia Museum of History & Culture’s 9 million item collection. With artifacts ranging from photographs to World War I uniforms to stills for making alcohol, every piece is inspired by an item of their choice.
“This is an expression of [the] history happening outside of our museum,” said Andrew Talkov, Vice President for Exhibitions and Publications. “And so we wanted to bring that into our museum. [These] objects have a deeper, broader story to tell.”
For muralist Amelia Langford, “Fresh Paint” is right up her alley. As an avid storyteller through intricate, black-and-white illustrations, graphic designs, and murals, Langford is ready to infuse her unique artistry with the historical account of her artifact.
“I am a vessel of storytelling. There’s always a story that drives my work…every little piece that’s in there, is there for a reason,” Langford said. “And now, [I want to] tell the story of Virginia.”
The 28-year-old Richmond native draws much of her inspiration from ecosystems and 18th and 19th-century naturalists. Although she isn’t ready to reveal her historical object of inspiration yet, Langford said she is excited to see street art meld deeper with Richmond art history.
“I’ve been painting murals for 15 years,” Langford said. “Street art was, at one point, something that was frowned upon. But in today’s culture, it’s something very accepting and it brightens a community [like] Richmond. We have over 100 murals from artists all over the world and locally [becoming] a part of our community and our modern-day culture.”
“Fresh Paint” will feature 10 artists: Mickael Broth, Nico Cathcart, Wing Chow, Hamilton Glass, Chris Hulburt, Amelia Langford, Austin Miles, Toobz Muir, Noah Scalin, and Ed Trask. With distinct artistic styles, each muralist’s artifact will be displayed next to the finished mural for viewers to see where the inspiration came from. Some of the specific artifacts to be highlighted include a 1921 photograph of social reformer Janie Porter Barrett, an automobile made early in Virginia, a sword from a Civil War battlefield near Petersburg, and a hat worn at the 2017 Women’s March.
Abstract artist Wing Chow plans to connect her personal style with a historical photograph of the Natural Bridge, a geological formation in Rockbridge County that forms an arch. Chow’s art is characterized by amorphous, flowing forms and a cooler-toned palette – blues, greens, purples – and sometimes, the occasional pop of orange or pink. Talkov said the curators were particularly intrigued to see how her artistic style would marry with that of historical Virginia.
“[Chow] doesn’t have a lot of historical pieces in her portfolio,” Talkov said. “But we really thought seeing her art style applied to historical objects and stories would be interesting.”
Wing Chow was drawn to the photo by the scale of the story it tells. She said, “More so than just the history of Virginia, [the photograph] relates to the history of the world as a whole.” She added, “You see these giant, geological formations that took millions of years to form and there’s this sublime quality about it. It’s incredible to realize that [these structures were] formed so many years before we could even fathom…and you come to terms with the fact that our lifespans are so short.”
As a firm believer in creating through consciousness and infusing spirituality into her work, Chow plans to symbolically depict the Natural Bridge as a portal into the metaphysical. Or as she puts it, “portals into other ways of thinking.”
Alongside “Fresh Paint,” VMHC will launch the exhibit’s companion publication, called “The Story of Virginia: Highlights from the Virginia Museum of History and Culture,” compiling a survey of Virginia history into photographs.
The collaborative exhibition offers Richmonders the chance to watch these stories of Virginia history come to life as muralists paint their creations. As the artists create, their workspace will be open for people to observe and meet the artists. The featured artists will be working on their pieces between Sept. 10 and Oct. 12. A schedule can be found at virginiahistory.org.
“Fresh Paint” will officially open on Oct. 27 and will be on display through April 14, 2019.
“I’m not usually this busy,” says Aaron McIntosh when I finally track him down at Baltimore’s School 33 Art Center. In the process of setting up the first public showing of his Invasive Queer Kudzu project, he’s been hard to pin down. It’s no surprise — the multi-layered installation of cloth leaves sewn together into quilts designed to look like kudzu vines is the culmination of three years’ work for McIntosh, an artist and professor in the Craft and Material Studies Department of VCU’s School Of The Arts, and he wants it to be perfect.
The article originally appeared in RVA #33 Summer 2018, you can check out the issue here, or pick it up around Richmond now.
Invasive Queer Kudzu is bigger than just McIntosh, though — it incorporates thousands of stories from the LGBTQ community of the American South. “The project tackles the intersectional ways that queerness and oppression function in the South,” McIntosh explains. “[It uses] kudzu as a metaphor to talk about exponentially growing queer stories across the South, invading the dominant Southern narratives that often don’t include stories like yours and mine.”
To bring the project to fruition, McIntosh has spent the last three years crisscrossing the South; facilitating workshops, collecting stories from LGBTQ archives, and setting up booths at Pride festivals in cities all over the region. He has collected thousands of stories, in the form of kudzu leaves — enough to create a huge quilt of kudzu vines.
Quilting comes naturally to him. “I’m a fourth-generation quilt-maker myself. All of the craft processes I grew up around were for the useful and the purposeful,” he says. But as he grew, McIntosh was drawn to a more artistic approach. “I got into making clothes, and initially wanted to go into fashion design,” he says. “I also painted in high school and am just as interested in painting and sculpture as I am in quilt making. I feel like my primary focus is hitting its stride, combining and conflating all of those things.”
His decision to do so in the form of kudzu was inspired by his experience helping elderly relatives tend their gardens. “Pulling a lot of weeds, and being back in that space, that activity, with my family,” he says. “Particularly pulling things that I do know have nutritional value, and some people eat them in fancy salads, but my family pulls them and speaks of them in negative ways.”
Kudzu is often discussed in negative ways, due to its tendency to overtake fields, trees, and even buildings, under the noses of unwary inhabitants. But McIntosh views it through a different lens. “These are plants,” he says. “Weeds have been here for aeons; these are things that grow of their own natural volition. People grow and do things of their own natural volition. And culturally, there’s a framework for deciding what is different, and what is other.”
The metaphor for queerness here is obvious. And that drew McIntosh in. “Since I was a child i’ve been interested in why something’s different,” he says. “The second I learn that it is, I want to know more. I think that’s the root of my queerness, the roots of my interest in being an artist in general, and my gravitation towards fiber arts — which are ‘wrong’ for my gender, to think in traditional norms.”
Now that McIntosh, with essential help from volunteers, has assembled the many different contributions into vines, he’s taking the project’s public installations to the next level. For Invasive Queer Kudzu’s first appearance in Baltimore, McIntosh and volunteers assembled a nearly full-scale replica of Club Hippo — a now-defunct gay bar that opened in Baltimore in the late 70s — right in the middle of the gallery. “It’s built as a monument in memoriam to itself,” McIntosh says.
This is the ultimate aim of the Invasive Queer Kudzu project: “taking over problematic monuments to the South,” in McIntosh’s words. “That’s very loosely and broadly defined,” he explains. “When you think of a monument you probably think more readily of the Jefferson Davis monument [on Monument Ave] — or the Alabama State Capitol building, which is the former Confederate Capitol in Montgomery, Alabama. Now I’m staring at the Club Hippo, which is a different kind of monument — a monument to a gay bar that is no longer.”
In the coming years, McIntosh will be bringing site-specific installations to cities all over the South — and Richmond is next on the list. 1708 Gallery will host Invasive Queer Kudzu in 2019, when the vines will be reconfigured to cover an as-yet-unrevealed Richmond monument. McIntosh is also working on a project with Side By Side and the Visual Arts Center, to bring LGBTQ youth and their families together for what he calls “a really humongous queer quilting bee.”
“I had always hoped that this project would highlight different queer organizations that are doing the same thing I’m doing, but with more tangible results,” McIntosh says. “What Side By Side is doing is in many ways more important than what I’m doing, and I’m really excited for the project to connect with these kinds of organizations.”
“I’m excited most of all to bring different generations together,” he says. “That’s something that is really present in this project. You’re looking at archival documents from a queer past in the South, and all these contributions from people in the present. I think intergenerational queer activities are something we could all use right now.”
