RVA Mag

Richmond, VA Culture & Politics Since 2005

Menu

Knot & Stem Brings Hand-Crafted Tapestries To Richmond

|

Topics: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Among the dreary days of coronavirus, a new handmade weaving business is bringing some color back to Richmond with Knot & Stem. 

The dreary reality of living during the COVID-19 quarantine is an abundance of spare time. It’s easy to lose days or weeks doing nothing when there’s nothing to do. However, the artistically talented have seen new opportunities in the throes of isolation, as their spare time translates into tangible works of art.

This is the case for Richmond’s Samantha Weiss, a local artist and VCUArts grad who recently launched Knot & Stem. Creating hand-crafted woven tapestries, Weiss offers custom designs and themed work through her online business. 

PHOTO: Knot & Stem

“I just wanted to make people happy with more art in the house,” said Weiss. “Maybe make some extra money.” Like many others during COVID-19, Weiss lost her full-time design job to the pandemic’s economic disaster, but she used the situation to bring some color back into her world — and into homes across Richmond. 

Knot & Stem tapestries cost anywhere from $25 to $50, and come in a variety of color schemes and designs. Of course, Weiss also takes custom orders where she works more closely with customers for a particular design. 

PHOTO: Knot & Stem

Weiss’s woven tapestry pieces are created improvisationally, based on a color scheme. Her style is influenced by her career history as an interior designer, which gives her a keen eye when it comes to perfectly crafted colors and other design elements. 

“It definitely gives me an advantage in terms of aesthetics and home decor,” said Weiss. “But it’s a little bit more whimsical, since I was in the corporate design world. I was mostly doing offices. It’s more fun to think about home design.” 

Apart from her interior design experience, Weiss is mostly a self-taught artist. Along with weaving, she’s talented in several other art forms: watercolor, embroidery, and especially glass-blowing, in which she majored at VCU. 

PHOTO: Knot & Stem

Her interest in weaving sparked in 2017, when coming across other artists inspired her to try her own hand at the skill. The isolation of COVID-19 gave her a window to fully commit to the new projects. 

“[Weaving takes] a long time, so it’s always hard with a job,” said Weiss. “Since the end of March, I’ve been weaving all day every day. I’m finally getting better.”

Weiss began creating weaved tapestries for Knot & Stem in a small space in her home. She’s not the only talented one in the family — her brother, Andre Weiss DeLaRosa, owns and operates his own wood shop called DeLaRosa’s Creations. In late June, he custom-built a fully operational weaving loom for Weiss. Now Knot & Stem can take custom commissions for weaved tapestries up to four feet long. 

PHOTO: Knot & Stem

As she moves forward with her business, Weiss is also diving back into the design world. She has full plans to keep growing Knot & Stem alongside her work. 

“I definitely want to keep the Knot & Stem business alive, by weaving at night and working by day,” said Weiss. “It’s brought me a lot of peace. I hope I can continue doing it as much as possible.” 

To find more work by Knot & Stem or order a custom piece of your own, visit the business on Instagram. Keep it colorful, RVA!

Top Photo via Knot & Stem

VCUarts Fashion Brings A Lovely Shimmer To Main Street Station

|

Topics: , , , , , ,

The annual VCUarts Fashion Show is catwalking into its 50th year.

This dean’s-level event is well-attended, not only by students but by members of the community and esteemed guests as well. It will be held at the Train Shed at Main Street Station on Wednesday, May 8 for the second year in a row, according to Patricia Brown, chair of the VCUarts department of fashion design and merchandising.

The show has been hosted at a variety of venues over the years, both big and small. Most recently the VCUarts Fashion Show was hosted at the VMFA, but in the last couple of years, the department developed a need for a larger space.

“This venue gives us more space,” Brown said. “We have more room, which creates its own challenges, but I think it’s a really great dramatic space to have it in.”

Photo: Steven Casanova. Designer: Johana Nasreen

Among the guests filling the Train Shed will be design duo Abdul Abasi and Greg Rosborough, whose pieces, Brown said, have reinvented the men’s suit with a utilitarian take. VCUarts alum and fashion illustrator Richard Haines will also be flown in from New York to see the show.

In an effort to have a more straightforward show, the number of designs shown will be limited to around 125, as opposed to last year’s nearly 175. The department aims to keep the show around an hour, Brown said.

Photo: Steven Casanova. Designer: Johana Nasreen

Of the approximately 125 designs to be shown, most junior and senior design students will be represented, along with the expertise of merchandising students, who comprise the majority of the 360-strong department. The show will feature women’s sportswear, dresses, menswear, denim, embellishment/luxury, and surface design, all created by hand or with the assistance of industry-standard machinery.

The VCUarts Fashion Show is juried, and garments are selected by a group of local fashion businesses and influencers. A mix of fashion industry people and retailers including Ledbury, Alton Lane, Frances Kahn, and Pam Reynolds are just a few members of the 12-person jury who will be judging the show. Working with their assessments, they will come down to final number of pieces for the show.

Not only is the show juried by local fashion icons, but it is also locally sponsored.

“The community is really supportive of our show,” Brown said. “We’re so thankful. We have a lot of gratitude for their support.”

Photo: Steven Casanova. Designer: Conner Karlen

To celebrate its 50th year, the show has been dubbed “Shimmer,” a title bearing a triple meaning.

“It was alluding to the celebratory feeling of it being the 50th anniversary,” Brown said. “But, it also has a little nod to modern shimmer technology, and just being more tech-forward. And also, the shimmering faces of graduating students who are showing their work.”

This dean’s-level event can be viewed in-person or by livestream this year. Tickets are available for purchase online starting at $30, with discounts available for fashion students and their families.

“For this year, we will have a much broader range of prices for show seats,” Brown said. “While we need to keep some of the higher cost front-row seats in order to cover our costs, attending the show can also be more affordable this year.”

The event will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 8, 2019, at the Train Shed in Main Street Station. For more information, visit the VCUarts website.

Top Photo: Steven Casanova. Designer: Maryam Al-Majid


“Home Sweet Home” VCUarts Undergraduate Juried Exhibition

|

Topics: , ,

March 15-28, 2019
The Anderson

One of The Anderson’s signature events in the student exhibition calendar, the annual Undergraduate Juried Exhibition showcases the best in VCUarts Undergraduate studio research. This year’s theme “Home Sweet Home,” provided by Juror Rebecca Matalon, Curator at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, promises a timely and provocative exhibition.

TICKETS: https://arts.vcu.edu/calendar/event/undergraduate-juried-exhibition/

Building a Bigger Catwalk: Rudy Lopez Brings His Vision to Richmond’s Fashion Scene

|

Topics: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

During his first year as a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, Rudy Lopez helped orchestrate the largest end-of-year showcase the fashion department has ever seen, held at the Main Street Train Shed. This is a dramatic achievement for Lopez, who, even a year ago, thought working as a professor at VCU was far from likely. After years of failed starts and stints in retail to pay the bills, he’s at the forefront of campus fashion, and branching out city-wide.

This article originally appeared in RVA #33 Summer 2018, you can check out the issue here, or pick it up around Richmond now. 

Lopez, originally from the Philippines, grew up in a family of achievers. His father was a doctor, his sister a financial executive; another sister went into the arts and became a sculptor. He came of age during the 1990s East Coast skateboarding scene. Although he loved to draw from his earliest years, he really explored his creative side while playing in bands and traveling to hardcore punk shows in DC. When it came to a career, he wasn’t sure where his many interests and energy would lead.

Lopez took his first shot at college at George Mason University, where he quickly partied his way to academic probation. The summer after his first year, while talking about his future, a friend asked if he could see himself drawing more. Lopez immediately thought, “Yes, of course.” He researched art schools and sent in five drawings to VCU; his journey through art school started that fall, in 1998.

The words of Dean Richard Toscan during orientation shaped him in ways that probably weren’t expected — he still remembers them today: “If you think you are the hot-shot artist in [your] high school, look around; you’re one of 500.”

“I felt way over my head,” Lopez said. “I wasn’t that artist.” Self-fulfilling or not, his prophecy turned out to be right — but something good still came of his struggles through the school’s foundation classes, which he called “art bootcamp.” The summer after that first year, Lopez received an invitation to help out with a fashion show in New York, hosted by Organization for Returning Fashion Interest (ORFI).

“They needed help putting on the fashion show, filling out model sheets, organizing garments, sending invitations; the grunt work,” Lopez said. He hopped a train to New York, where he went 48 hours without any sleep.

“I was surrounded by creatives,” he said. “I felt this overwhelming wave of passion.”

Photo By: @rudyhlopez

When he returned to VCU, he turned to the fashion department to merge his newfound interest with his desire to be creative. He pursued the Fashion Merchandising track, thinking he could study design later if he wanted. Future internships led him to new contacts in New York and revelations about his career path. After graduation, Lopez attended Parsons School of Design, where he studied fashion graphic design.

From Parsons, he worked his way back to Richmond’s Need Supply Co., where he worked as a store manager before opening Henry, a streetwear shop on Broad Street, in 2006. Although the store earned acclaim, and is seen as the foundation for the current streetwear scene in the Broad Street Arts District, it didn’t survive the economic downturn, closing in 2008.

Lopez was discouraged. “It got to a point where I hated the Richmond fashion scene,” he said. He and his wife decided it was time for a break from the city, returning to Lopez’s native Philippines for about five months. However, he came back for a position at VCU, as a manager at the campus technology store.

While there, an assistant professorship opened up at the Fashion Department in VCU. “They asked me to interview,” Lopez said, and he went for it, despite thinking it was a long shot. Fortunately, he got the job, and said he couldn’t be happier with the work, especially mentoring students like himself who struggle to find their passion.

“I love it — teaching, guiding, and mentoring,” Lopez said. “Looking back at my own path, I always liked giving younger, up-and-coming people advice. I loved helping them and giving them whatever I could.”

He described the team as “a great blend of analytical and creative backgrounds,” looking to “create well-rounded people who can think in a variety of ways.”

Enter Lopez. He hopes to encourage an increasing level of collaboration among departments in the school and with businesses in the community. He says the community is ready for it. “Everyone says, ‘I don’t follow fashion,’ but every single person is dressed,” he said. “You’re part of the cycle.”

During the end-of-year fashion showcase, Lopez invited friends to create music, bringing the community to the campus. Joe Davenport, who performs as DJ Bobby La Beat, laid out live beats.

It’s just a first, small step toward his goal of uniting different communities. “Collaboration this year is not as extensive as I would like,” he said. “When you look at the production of a fashion show, there are so many elements: we have music we need to curate, the Department of Theater could create backdrops for the fashion show, there’s opportunity to work more closely with the designers as they create their collections.”

The physical impact of his presence could be seen in the innovative runway design for the 2018 showcase. The venue selection gave students space to create a runway that welcomed three times as many guests compared to previous years. Compared to a typical 70-foot runway, Lopez said, this year’s runway snaked through the train shed for nearly 500 feet.

“People were caught off guard when I said the fashion show could be bigger,” Lopez said, about an event that was already dramatically larger than prior ones. “It could be bigger not even in terms of people, but to be inclusive of people outside of VCUArts and fashion.”

Ultimately, he does this work because he wants the next generation of fashion students to be as proud of Richmond as he is. He said his work is “a reflection of how proud I feel graduating from the school, and the students coming after me.”

Where Sound and Art Collide: The Practice of Kinetic Imaging

|

Topics: , , , , , ,

Have you ever wondered about the sounds around you? Take a moment and listen to your environment. Perhaps you can hear the chatter of your co-workers, maybe your phone just went off, or maybe all you can hear is the hum of the air conditioning circulating in the room. Have you ever stopped to think about what is causing the sounds you hear, or maybe wondered why the sounds you hear are making you feel the way they do?

Well, this summer, those with a curiosity for sound and making art with it will have a chance to do some serious experimenting with VCUarts’ Department of Kinetic Imaging new summer workshop series.

In partnership with Sound Arts Richmond, the department kicked off the program,  “Experiments In Sound,” to highlight a broad range of Kinetic imaging practices. The first of its kind for Richmond, the workshops are open to everyone, but primarily geared toward those looking to continue their education in the realm of fine art and sound. Participants can immerse themselves deeper into animation, film, video, sound production, and other emerging media.

The workshops offer everything from going on nature walks and learning how to create soundscapes, to learning how to build your own microphone, to learning how to use advanced software such as Ableton Live, podcasting, and making your own invisible speakers.

“A benefit from taking these workshops is that we have a lot of equipment, and a lot of software, so if you do have an interest in things, there’s only so much kind of playing you can do in your own studio at home,” said Stephanie Thulin, Assistant Director of the Kinetic Imaging Department.” [Experiments In Sound] gives you not only the space and the equipment to kind of play around with, but also gives you a community that you may not have known about.”

Community sits at the heart of what Experiments In Sound is all about. The plan for the workshops became solidified when Vaughn Garland, adjunct professor in the Department of Kinetic Imaging and creator of Sound Arts Richmond, approached Thulin about getting involved in the Sound Arts Richmond Festival that comes around every year from March to October.

“Sound Arts Richmond gave us that push to jump into something we were already interested in doing, but when [Garland] came to us with this idea, it was kind of like, well if we’re going to be involved, we should be involved in some kind of educational component because that’s who we are; and it should also highlight a range of sound art which is also who we are,” Thulin said.

Each workshop not only covers a wide range of sound art elements, but also gets you face-to-face with VCU Kinetic Imaging Faculty, practicing artists, and alumni who are helping to guide the workshops, answer any questions, and help attendees cultivate their knowledge and expertise in sound art.

“I hope the program encourages people to be more aware of their auditory surroundings, and the unique ways we experience life,” said Sara Bouchard, a Kinetic Imaging graduate student and co-creator of Experiments in Sound, of the program.

The workshops, which will run until June 30, have an average of seven to 10 people for paid programs, and 15 to 20 for the free program.

At the end of the workshops, participants have an opportunity to showcase their work at VCU’s Anderson Gallery on West Franklin Street.

“I saw this as not just a Kinetic Imaging thing and wanted to have the school of the arts be involved, showcasing how we, as a department, are advocates for the whole school. So, it’s Kinetic Imaging in partnership with The Anderson and Innovative Media,” said Thulin.

Experiments In Sound will run until June 30, you can check out the workshop series’ full schedule here.

 

VCU Sculpture Department, ICA, & Art 180 Collaborate to Create ‘Future Studio’ Program for Local Teens

|

Topics: , , , , , , , , , ,

For the past 10 weeks, a group of Richmond high schoolers spent their Saturdays in VCU’s Sculpture Department doing everything from woodworking to welding. They are the first generation of Future Studio, a free semester-long program aimed at giving Richmond teens hands-on experience creating art with the department.

Future Studio is a partnership between VCU’s Department of Sculpture + Extended Media, VCU’s Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) and Art 180, a Richmond based non-profit that provides art-related programs to young people living in challenging circumstances. The semester culminated in an art exhibition at Art 180’s gallery, a showcase made exclusively of student work.

Matt King, Chair of the VCU Sculpture Department, has been dreaming of this project for years. After receiving a grant from the VCU Division of Community Engagement, along with additional funding from the VCUart’s Dean’s Office, the project became a reality.

“This was conceived of as a way to reach out into the community and give back, to open our doors up to young artists who otherwise might not have a chance to work with the types of tools and materials we have here in the sculpture department,” King said.  

Some art programs in area high schools do not have many opportunities to experiment with sculpture, let alone resources as high-grade as the VCU facilities.

“Most high schools don’t offer any kind of strong program in three-dimensional art making, and this is true across the country,” King said. “Shop classes don’t exist so much in schools anymore, art classes rarely offer anything other than a perfunctory lesson on making something three-dimensional.”

Meanwhile, VCU has the number one ranked sculpture program in the country, and facilities that include a highly functioning woodshop, metal fabrication shop and a host of digital equipment.

The program is not limited exclusively to Richmond Public School students, instead, the applications are open to high school students from anywhere in the Richmond community. Ultimately, Future Studio accepted 15 students from 13 different high schools for this semester.

“It becomes this kind of melting pot for the city, for teens,” King said. “You have a student from St. Catherine’s working with a student from Meadowbrook and TJ. Having those students working together encourages a kind of dialogue that otherwise we wouldn’t be able to have.”

The Future Studio students do not require any prior experience, just a willingness to learn.

“We weren’t looking for students who had already studied sculpture or who had building skills or experience, we were really looking to hear their story, to find out who they were, with the idea that once they got here we would be starting from the ground up and they would learn together,” King said.

The students were given instruction on workshop safety and the intricacies of using hulking, intimidating equipment from the moving blades of a band saw to a plasma cutting torch. They watched demos in the wood shop with Leigh Cole, VCU instructor and shop technician, and were shown bending steel and welding by Abigail Lucien, adjunct VCU faculty, and metal tech.

Ian Gerson, a second-year MFA student in the VCU Sculpture Department, was the graduate TA for the program and spent his Saturdays these last few weeks with the students in the workshop.

“The kids got really excited about welding,” Gerson said. “Pretty much everybody’s project included some of the steel rod. They were just like lined up to weld, they were so hyped on that.”  

Without access to these resources and equipment at their high schools, its an exciting first-time opportunity for a lot of the students.

“There’s something exciting about the first time you build something that is stronger than you are,” King said.

But the program eclipses simply learning about tools and materials and physically making objects. The students participated in activities that helped to develop their sense of creative self.

“It goes much beyond building things. It really is a program that’s designed to inspire them to try to understand themselves and what’s important to them as young artists,” King said.

The head classroom instructor of the program and assistant professor in the VCU Sculpture + Extended Media department, Guadalupe Maravilla, brought in a variety of performance artists and undergraduate VCUarts students to teach activities to the high schoolers.

Gerson said these creative interludes were some of the most fun aspects of the program. One undergrad mentor entered the room on a skateboard. He left that way too, but not before leading the students in a raucous performance of a vocal symphony, where he played the conductor.

Mike Zetlan is the program manager for Atlas teen programs at Art 180, as well as the gallery manager. He calls the program a rousing success. “Trying to get that many kids to consistently show up on a Saturday is pretty hard,” he said.

Zetlan helped with the recruitment process, as well as eventually housing the exhibit in the Art 180 gallery space,  and said he was shocked at the turnout: 56 applicants for the 15 spot program.

He said that one of the most important aspects of the aptly named Future Studio is the way it looks to the future for its high school participants. It gave them a taste of the college experience, a chance to experience a renowned arts program and campus life. After the program, several of the eligible high schoolers applied to the VCU Arts program for the next year.  

The Future Studio art exhibition opened at RVA’s First Fridays last week, where the students showed up with family and friends despite the weekend’s ice and snow.  

“Even the staff has been really overwhelmed by how good this show is,” Zetlan said.  “I’ve gotten more feedback on the show than I have in a while…it feels a little bit more like a traditional gallery.”

King said that the program’s biggest criticism is that the students wished it would last longer. In fact, next semester the Saturday sessions have been increased from four hours to five. Applications for the spring semester of Future Studio are open now and will be closing on Jan. 18. The program is open to current sophomore, junior, and senior high school students. 

A closing reception for the exhibit is set for Jan. 26 from 6-8 p.m. at the Art 180 gallery.

Top Photo Credit: VCU Sculpture & Extended Media