Reception sponsored by King's Grant • Best in Show sponsored by Virginia Glass & Mirror
Expressions is an annual exhibition of work by artists from southern Virginia and the surrounding regions. This showcase of regional talent features an eclectic mix of work from hundreds of artists working in watercolor, oil and acrylic, mixed media, drawing, photography and sculpture.
Visit the museum to vote for the People's Choice Award. Winner will be announced after the close of the exhibit.
Sponsored by Cindy and Steve Edgerton, Paige and Jay Frith, Tracie Heavner and Jim Frith, Pete Mannen and Jennifer Reis, Barbara and Guy Stanley and Lynwood Artists
Susan Lenz works in partnership with her materials to articulate the accumulated memory inherent in discarded things. By using multiples of seemingly mundane items, she puts into perspective the abundance of life and the capacity to keep things as if for a "rainy day." Paper clips, keys, bottle caps, buttons, nails, plastic spoons and old clock parts are combined with dominoes, film reels, old toys and holiday decorations. These and so many other, often vintage, items are repetitively hand-stitched into meditative patterns on sections of old quilts, bringing an extraordinary new life to otherwise everyday things.
Other altered works address marriage, systemic racism, genealogy, reliance on mechanical appliances and common adages. In each piece, Lenz uses a familiar object in an unexpected way to voice current ideas and social concern.
Lenz's work has appeared in national publications, numerous juried and invitational exhibitions and at fine craft shows including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Craft Shows. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Textile Museum in Washington, DC and the McKissick Museum in South Carolina. Susan has been awarded fully funded fellowships to several art residencies including Great Basin National Park, Guadalupe Mountains National Park, The Anderson Center, PLAYA, Hot Springs National Park, the Studios of Key West, and Homestead National Monument. She has been featured on art quilting television programs, Columbia Museum of Art’s educational videos, and South Carolina Etv. Her solo shows and installations have been mounted all over the world, including at Mesa Contemporary Museum of Art and as far away as the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, England.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Cindy and Steve Edgerton, Paige and Jay Frith, Tracie Heavner and Jim Frith, Pete Mannen and Jennifer Reis, Barbara and Guy Stanley and Lynwood Artists
Linda Starr is an artist of passion whose work exudes the same colorful and playful energy as her spirit. Her intuitive painting process is an arrival point reached over a multi-decade career as a painter. In Starr's work, nothing is planned or pre-engineered. She applies paint on canvas without conscious thought to the subject, often rotating the canvas in different directions before determining how the images will emerge.
Her paintings are often sculptural, laden with texture and vibrant color, and always full of story. Starr uses shape, patterns and repetition to create whimsical scenes with rich tones and meaning. Much like the way a story provides setting, plot, characters and action to elicit an emotion from the reader, Starr intends to do the same for the viewer with her work.
Whether she is creating icon-like imagery of strong female leaders, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, or a surrealistic cityscapes full of detail, Starr hopes to energize the viewer and to provide them with that same sense of joy that she feels during her spontaneous and free painting process.
A New York City native, Starr spent 10 years in private study with Carla Re’, 15 years in the film industry and 10 years designing window displays. Since relocating to North Carolina in 2007, she co-founded the North Carolina Women’s Art Collective and works to champion opportunities and make space for women artists of her age.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Cindy and Steve Edgerton, Paige and Jay Frith, Tracie Heavner and Jim Frith, Pete Mannen and Jennifer Reis, Barbara and Guy Stanley and Lynwood Artists
The Lynwood Artists Gallery features work by Lisa Garrett. Garrett is a painter working in various mediums, including watercolor, acrylic and oil. She is member of Lynwood Artists and Bull Mountain Artists, and frequently enters her work in Expressions at Piedmont Arts. Her main passion is painting pet portraits.
The Lynwood Artists Gallery is curated by Lynwood Artists, an organization for practicing artists in the Martinsville-Henry County area. Its members share a desire to stimulate understanding and enjoyment of fine art and the artistic process, while providing area artists with opportunities to exhibit and further develop their talents.
Sponsored by Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., Kappa Delta Omega Chapter Sorority, Sharon and Bob Bushnell, Ashley and Ronnie Fultz, Olivia and Pres Garrett, Harold Jones, Karyna Jones, Susan and John Kellett-Forsyth, Lynwood Artists
To meet Freeman Vines (b. 1942) is to meet America itself. An artist, a luthier, and a spiritual philosopher, Vines’ life is a witness to the truths and contradictions of the American South. He remembers the hidden histories of the eastern North Carolina land on which his family has lived since enslavement. For more than fifty years Vines has transformed materials culled from a forgotten landscape in his relentless pursuit of building a guitar capable of producing a singular tone that has haunted his dreams. From tobacco barns, mule troughs, and radio parts, he has created hand-carved guitars, each instrument seasoned down to the grain by the echoes of its past life.
In 2015, Vines befriended photographer and folklorist, Timothy Duffy (b. 1963) and the two began to document Vines’ guitars and his life story. Soon after, Vines acquired the lumbered boards of the tree on which Oliver Moore was lynched in 1930. Confronting the silences and memories of this dark episode in his local history brought Vines face to face with the toll of racial terror on his own life and work.
In addition to Vines' haunting sculptures, this exhibit also includes a number of tintype photographs by Duffy.
Hanging Tree Guitars is organized by Music Maker Foundation, a non-profit that provides financial grants and assistance to senior and vulnerable artists — those marginalized by age, poverty, race, gender, etc. — because these are the artists least likely to have the resources to share their musical messages with the world. Since 1994, Music Maker has served over 500 musicians whose work spans the entire history of American music.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., Kappa Delta Omega Chapter Sorority, Sharon and Bob Bushnell, Ashley and Ronnie Fultz, Olivia and Pres Garrett, Harold Jones, Karyna Jones, Susan and John Kellett-Forsyth, Lynwood Artists
Rodney Scott "Rupe" Dalton (1965–2022) was a nationally recognized artist from Henry County, Virginia. His paintings depict scenes from the everyday lives of his friends, family and neighbors and speak to the traditions of many Black Southern families.
Often called a renaissance man, Rupe was a barber by trade, a comedian at heart and a born artist who used airbrush to create works with depth and soul. His work elevated airbrush to new heights and his powerful subject matter invites memory to play an intimate role in viewing his work.
A never-before-seen work by Rupe will be unveiled at the opening reception on Jan. 27.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., Kappa Delta Omega Chapter Sorority, Sharon and Bob Bushnell, Ashley and Ronnie Fultz, Olivia and Pres Garrett, Harold Jones, Karyna Jones, Susan and John Kellett-Forsyth, Lynwood Artists
The Lynwood Artists Gallery features work by Rocky Wall. Wall is a photographer and self-described "tech geek" from Axton, Virginia. He works in 35 mm, digital photography and graphic art. His scenes range from landscapes to wildlife to night photography, and include many shots of southern Virginia scenery.
The Lynwood Artists Gallery is curated by Lynwood Artists, an organization for practicing artists in the Martinsville-Henry County area. Its members share a desire to stimulate understanding and enjoyment of fine art and the artistic process, while providing area artists with opportunities to exhibit and further develop their talents.
Sponsored by Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., Kappa Delta Omega Chapter Sorority, Sharon and Bob Bushnell, Ashley and Ronnie Fultz, Olivia and Pres Garrett, Harold Jones, Karyna Jones, Susan and John Kellett-Forsyth, Lynwood Artists.
A Richmond, Virginia native, Robert Wright Forsyth IV (1952–2021) often found himself at odds with society and the world outside the forest cottage he called home. As a link to the world around him, he began photographing the natural world. Forsyth was fascinated with the interplay of light, object and motion. When he began work with Norfolk Southern Railroad, machines took on a larger role in his photography, incorporating a sense of space very different from the wooded home he loved. The natural world and the mechanical world formed a union that he explored until his death.
This exhibition is on loan from the Robert Wright Forsyth Estate and Trust.
Sponsored by Bunco Babes, Nancy Baker, Susan Critz, Jerri and Joe DeVault, Sandra Ford, Olivia and Pres Garrett, Libby Kormos, Anne and Gene Madonia, Susan and David Morris, Betty Lou and Ron Pigg, John and Deborah Schupp, Virginia Foothills Quilters Guild and Lynwood Artists
Curated by master quilter Linda M. Fiedler and quilter Betty Blessin, The Art of the Quilt is a showcase of quilted works by artists from across the Southeast. More than 40 artists participate in this biennial exhibition, displaying work from bed coverings to quilted clothing, to non-utilitarian art pieces made purely for the love of the craft.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Bunco Babes, Nancy Baker, Susan Critz, Jerri and Joe DeVault, Sandra Ford, Olivia and Pres Garrett, Libby Kormos, Anne and Gene Madonia, Susan and David Morris, Betty Lou and Ron Pigg, John and Deborah Schupp, Virginia Foothills Quilters Guild and Lynwood Artists
The Lynwood Artists Gallery features work by Virginia Foothills Quilters Guild. This a biennial group exhibition includes everything from wearables to wall hangings to good, old-fashioned bed coverings.
The Lynwood Artists Gallery is curated by Lynwood Artists, an organization for practicing artists in the Martinsville-Henry County area. Its members share a desire to stimulate understanding and enjoyment of fine art and the artistic process, while providing area artists with opportunities to exhibit and further develop their talents.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Bunco Babes, Nancy Baker, Susan Critz, Jerri and Joe DeVault, Sandra Ford, Olivia and Pres Garrett, Libby Kormos, Anne and Gene Madonia, Susan and David Morris, Betty Lou and Ron Pigg, John and Deborah Schupp, Virginia Foothills Quilters Guild and Lynwood Artists
Featuring cross stitch samplers wrought by local artisan Marilyn Vaughn over a thirty year period. Vaughn's pieces feature familiar themes of home, family and love.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Toy and Joe Cobbe, Jo and Don Grayson, Nancy and Henry Moore, Barbara and Andy Parker, Barbara and Guy Stanley, Lynn and Noel Ward and Lynwood Artists
This exhibition of large-scale oil-on-canvas figure paintings by Virginia Derryberry explores contemporary aspects of alchemy, the forerunner of modern science. Many of the paintings are multi-panel pieces that use a Renaissance altarpiece format and question the nature of sequential narrative.
The intent is to suggest multiple interpretations rather than straightforward illustration of a specific narrative. At first glance, it seems that a "real" space is being defined, but in fact, the painted images are constructed from multiple viewpoints and lighting systems. Passages of volumetric rendering set next to more abstract, painterly areas result in the creation of a virtual, shifting world where nothing is quite what it seems.
Derryberry’s work is shown regularly in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, and her paintings have been written about in an extensive list of publications including, New American Paintings magazine and Oxford American magazine. She has received such awards as Outstanding Artistic Achievement from the Southeastern College Art Association; Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome; Distinguished Teacher of the Year Award and the Feldman Professor Award for scholarship from UNC-Asheville; and the Annual Artist Fellowship from the Southeastern College Art Association.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Toy and Joe Cobbe, Jo and Don Grayson, Nancy and Henry Moore, Barbara and Andy Parker, Barbara and Guy Stanley, Lynn and Noel Ward and Lynwood Artists
Davis Choun is a Raleigh-based artist working in sculpture and digital media. His work is born out of an attraction to discarded or everyday materials, most notably clothespins. After disassembling the clothespins, the wood pieces are then burned, dyed, and/or stained. Using those pieces, he composes a pattern to affix to a panel, allowing the clothespins to interact and layer on one another. His processes of manipulation heavily rely on improvisation and continuity.
Choun was born and raised in Rutherford County in western North Carolina and graduated from the School of Design at NC State University. His work has been supported by various galleries around North Carolina, including Artspace in downtown Raleigh, where he was awarded an Emerging Artist Residency.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Toy and Joe Cobbe, Jo and Don Grayson, Nancy and Henry Moore, Barbara and Andy Parker, Barbara and Guy Stanley, Lynn and Noel Ward and Lynwood Artists
In celebration of the 85th anniversary of the completion of the Appalachian Trail, this exhibition is a pictorial guide of the natural beauty of the Appalachian Mountains collected on photographer Bill Booz's thru-hike of the entire 2,160-mile-long trail. This seven-month odyssey took Booz through 14 states and an estimated five million steps to complete.
A landscape photographer who travels the world to capture images of its most beautiful natural places, Booz's photographs transport viewers into some of nature's finest scenes — from delicate details of flowers in the spring to the majesty of the mountains in fall.
On his travels, Booz has visited all 50 states, and far-flung locales like China, Australia and Africa. He has SCUBA dived on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, summited Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa and hiked on the Great Wall of China. Adventures like tracking Silverback gorillas in Rwanda, swimming with sharks in Central America and monkey’s jumping into his arms in China have all contributed to his amazing experiences.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Toy and Joe Cobbe, Jo and Don Grayson, Nancy and Henry Moore, Barbara and Andy Parker, Barbara and Guy Stanley, Lynn and Noel Ward and Lynwood Artists
The Lynwood Artists Gallery features work by Pat Coleman.
The Lynwood Artists Gallery is curated by Lynwood Artists, an organization for practicing artists in the Martinsville-Henry County area. Its members share a desire to stimulate understanding and enjoyment of fine art and the artistic process, while providing area artists with opportunities to exhibit and further develop their talents.
Reception sponsored by King's Grant. Best in Show sponsored by Virginia Mirror Company.
Expressions is an annual exhibition of work by artists from southern Virginia and the surrounding regions. This showcase of regional talent features an eclectic mix of work from 114 artists working in watercolor, oil and acrylic, mixed media, drawing, photography and sculpture.
Visit the museum to vote for the People's Choice Award. Winner will be announced after the close of the exhibit.
Admission Free
Sponsored by by Ann Cardwell, Jerri and Joe DeVault, Suzan and Bill Kirby, Anne and Gene Madonia, Susan and Bill Moore, Susan and David Morris, Betty Lou and Ron Pigg and Lynwood Artists
Richard Joyce is a native of Newport News, Virginia. He grew up on the water and enjoys focusing on nature to this day. He ran the Hampton City Schools Planetarium for 12 years and then owned his own audio visual business until he fell off a ladder in 2003 and had a traumatic brain injury. Even with the numerous challenges he faces every day, he continues to take photographs and enhance many of them through computer programs. In the last few years, he has started painting as well.
He actively donates photos to auctions and enters photos and paintings in art shows across Virginia and recently placed 2nd in the Reynolds Homestead art show.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Ann Cardwell, Jerri and Joe DeVault, Suzan and Bill Kirby, Anne and Gene Madonia, Susan and Bill Moore, Susan and David Morris, Betty Lou and Ron Pigg and Lynwood Artists
The Looking at Appalachia project was created to rectify the many misconceptions about the Appalachian people that widely took root in the minds of Americans in the early 20th century.
In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty in the United States and nowhere was this war more photographed than Appalachia. Many of the War on Poverty photographs, whether intentional or not, became a visual definition of Appalachia. These images have often drawn from the poorest areas and people to gain support for the intended cause, but unjustly came to represent the entirety of the region while simultaneously perpetuating stereotypes.
In an attempt to explore the diversity of Appalachia and establish a visual counter point, this project looks at Appalachia fifty years after the declaration of the War on Poverty. Drawing from a diverse population of photographers within the region, this new crowdsourced image archive serves as a reference that is defined by its people as opposed to political legislation.
This project is designed and directed by Roger May and consists of 64 photographs made by 45 photographers, including:
Nathan Armes, Sandy Berry, Josh Birnbaum, Sarah Boal, Rachel Boillot, Matthew Brown, Paul Chambers, Ashleigh Coleman, Rob Culpepper, Cameron Davidson, Ed DeWitt, Tiffany Dodd, George Etheredge, Annelise Ferry, Michelle Frankfurter, Wes Frazer, Amanda Greene, Celia Hamby, Justin Hamel, Joy Hart, Pat Jarrett, Mark Johnson, John Kelso, Nate Larson, Zane Logan, William Major, Pete Marovich, Roger May, Michaela Miller, Lou Murrey, Celina Odeh, Pat Owens, Lauren Pond, Jared Ragland, Cris Ritchie, Laura Saunders, Dennis Savage, Martin Seelig, Stephanie Strasburg, Kristian Thacker, David Torke, Pang Tubhirun, Forest Walingford, Andrew Wertz, Meg Wilson
Admission Free
Sponsored by Ann Cardwell, Jerri and Joe DeVault, Suzan and Bill Kirby, Anne and Gene Madonia, Susan and Bill Moore, Susan and David Morris, Betty Lou and Ron Pigg and Lynwood Artists
Moths are the shamans of the night forest, hidden until we seek them.
Deborah Davis brings to light the true character of these nocturnal creatures in paintings that are at once expansive and intimate. Capturing in grand scale the intricate patterns and colors of moths, which are rarely observed in casual encounters at the porch light, Davis lifts the veil of mystery surrounding these nighttime visitors.
Admission Free
Pollinators are an essential part of the natural world. One in three bites of food we eat depends on pollinators. From butterflies and bees to beetles and birds, many kinds of pollinators have evolved within their ecosystems by building unique relationships with plants.
Pollination Investigation is a 14-poster series that takes participants on an exploration of the who, what, when, where, why, and how of pollination by interpreting the unique relationship between pollinators and flowers.
Smithsonian Gardens partnered with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) to release the Pollination Investigation poster series free of charge to educators, thanks to a grant from the Smithsonian Women’s Committee.
On loan from the collection of Dink Gardner
Calling all NASCAR fans! It's Martinsville Speedway's 75th anniversary and Piedmont Arts is celebrating with an exhibit featuring memorabilia from the track's illustrious history.
View the first arial photo taken of Martinsville Speedway, autographed memorabilia including the bumper from Richard Petty's next-to-last race, original signed Sam Bass poster, track patches and pins and more.
| Open Race Week! | |
| April 5 – 9, 2022 | 10 am – 5 pm |
VMFA on the Road's Artmobile is a traveling art museum from Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, that brings art to remote corners of Virginia by way of the museum's Statewide Partners program.
Tour Revealing and Obscuring Identity: Portraits from the Permanent Collection, an exhibition examining the complex role of portraiture across cultures and time periods. Beginning with the Japanese artist Kitagawa Utamaro, and concluding with American artist Gordon Stettinius, we consider how artists have used portraiture as a means to both reveal and obscure their sitter’s identity.
| Artmobile Schedule | |
| Friday, March 25 | 1 – 7 pm |
| Saturday, March 26 | 11 am – 2 pm |
Sponsored by Gael and Smith Chaney, Cindy and Steve Edgerton, Marty Gardner, Jennifer Reis and Pete Mannen, Barbara and Guy Stanley, The Martinsville Graduate Kappa Delta Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and Lynwood Artists
For 35 years, photographer Timothy Duffy has forged a unique vision immortalizing Southern musical heroes and the world in which they live. The founder of Music Maker Foundation — a non-profit that preserves the musical traditions of the South by directly supporting the musicians who make it — Duffy traveled the South to capture this compelling collection of 25 wet-plate collodion photographs, which were printed with the platinum/palladium process.
The exhibit includes portraits ranging from guitar virtuoso and Allman Brothers Band member Derek Trucks and legendary bluesman Taj Mahal to lesser-known blues and soul artists, as well as images of instruments, like former Carolina Chocolate Drops member Dom Flemons' circa 1920 banjo, “Big Head Joe.”
Many of Duffy's subjects are the great, great grandchildren of enslaved people. The blues, gospel and jazz they created under these dire circumstances have profoundly shaped every contemporary form of popular music around the globe. Faced with this history, Duffy's images challenge the viewer to consider issues of racial equity as well as America's cultural heritage.
About Music Maker Foundation
Timothy and Denise Duffy founded Music Maker Foundation in 1994 to preserve and support our nation’s musical traditions by improving the lives of the artists who make them. Music Maker programs serve the most vulnerable artists — those marginalized by age, poverty, race, gender, etc. — because these are the artists least likely to have the resources to share their musical messages with the world. Since 1994, Music Maker has served over 500 musicians whose work spans the entire history of American music: blues, gospel, folk, singer-songwriter, Appalachian string band and Native American.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Gael and Smith Chaney, Cindy and Steve Edgerton, Marty Gardner, Jennifer Reis and Pete Mannen, Barbara and Guy Stanley, The Martinsville Graduate Kappa Delta Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and Lynwood Artists
Imagine stumbling upon a timeworn box of postcards. Maybe you are exploring a flea market, a museum archive, or even a dusty attic. A sense of voyeurism compels you to look closer and to read the one-sided correspondence on the cards. Perhaps you wonder about the writer, the addressee, and the images themselves. And maybe, just maybe, you find yourself time-traveling as you experience the life witnessed in these intimate missives.
The Postcards
This is the premise behind Dear B.J.: Postcards from the Pandemic. This series is a creative non-fiction interpretation of life in Appalachia during the COVID-19 pandemic, as imagined by artist L.S. King, through intimate postcard-sized images and written correspondence. Each card features a black-and-white photograph with a backside written to a mysterious B.J. and signed by “ME.” Through these vagaries, King invites the viewer into a shared world. Perhaps you wonder who B.J. is, or maybe you know. Perhaps you relate to the “ME,” who signed the cards. And as you think about it all, perhaps you overlay King's visual narrative over your own.
The Images
King began photographing her neighborhood during daily walks in March 2020, when social isolation became the normal way of life. These images are purposefully reminiscent of the photography prevalent during the 1918 pandemic, specifically Pictorialism. This turn-of-the-20th-century art movement employed photographic manipulation to heighten grain and increase shadows to enhance an image’s emotive and atmospheric qualities. Such images read like poetry to King and are what she envisioned when working with these photographs.
Much like the end products of Pictorialism and early tourism memorabilia, King chose to print her artwork using a photo-mechanical process. She finished these as photopolymer gravure prints, a modern incarnation of the historic photogravure practice. Photopolymer gravures involve transferring an image to a light-sensitive printing plate, which is then developed, hardened, inked and paper is pressed onto the plate to create the end photograph.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Gael and Smith Chaney, Cindy and Steve Edgerton, Marty Gardner, Jennifer Reis and Pete Mannen, Barbara and Guy Stanley, The Martinsville Graduate Kappa Delta Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and Lynwood Artists
The Lynwood Artists Gallery features the work of local abstract painter, sculptor and jewelry designer Tara Compton.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Jill and Jay Dickens, Anne and Eric Smith, Barbara and Guy Stanley, King's Grant, Books and Crannies and Lynwood Artists
George Ray Shelton's painting style shows influences ranging from classic masters to contemporary media. Whatever the subject, one thing is clear: his brushes and spatulas are indeed his "tools of happiness."
Admission Free
Sponsored by Jill and Jay Dickens, Anne and Eric Smith, Barbara and Guy Stanley, King's Grant, Books and Crannies and Lynwood Artists
Asheville Printmakers is an independent alliance of artists working out of the Asheville, NC area, who express themselves through the medium of print. The group's work encompass a wide range of processes and content, from traditional to experimental and classic to contemporary. Their printing methods vary from relief printing such as woodblock, linocut, and wood engraving, to intaglio methods such as drypoint, etching, collagraph and photogravure. Some use alternative photographic printing processes such as platinum-palladium and gum biochromate; others employ monotype and variable editions in their work. A common thread is a hands-on involvement in making prints.
Featuring work by Bobbi Allen, Dona D. Barnett, Bette Bates, Anne Battram, Bridget Benton, Anne Bessac, Lisa Blackburn, Kristalyn Bunyan, Laurie Corral, Georgia Deal, Gwen Diehn, Claudia Dunaway, Lisa June Eames, Casey Engel, Martha Ensign Johnson, Maria Epes, Sheryl Gruenig, Clay Harmon, Heather Hietala, Dave Ladendorf, Carol Lawrence, Denise Markbreit, Lauren Miko, Angela Modzelewski, Martha Oatway, Lynn Allison Starun, Jo A. Taylor, Jessica C. White, Chris Whiteman and Ani Volkan.
Admission Free
On loan from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Sponsored by Jill and Jay Dickens, Anne and Eric Smith, Barbara and Guy Stanley, King's Grant, Books and Crannies and Lynwood Artists
Born to Italian immigrant parents and raised in Rochester, New York, Chiarenza’s interest in photography developed early in his childhood. From 1953 to 1957, Chiarenza studied at the Rochester Institute of Technology under the direction of Minor White and Ralph Hattersley. Since the late 1960s, Chiarenza has been a leading figure in a movement that seeks to expand the conceptual boundaries of photography. Chiarenza’s photographs have been included in more than 80 solo and 250 group exhibitions since 1957. His black-and-white photographs, which often contain elements of collage, have continued to challenge notions of landscape, abstraction, visitor perspective, and the very medium of photography itself.
Chiarenza is inspired by both the beauty of and human connections to landscapes, but has been continuously dissatisfied with his outdoor nature photographs. In acknowledging that traditional depictions of landscapes in paintings are constructed, he began to approach his photographs as abstract and emotional constructions that allow us to examine nature in relation to the self.
The key characteristic that came to dominate Chiarenza’s style was nyctophilia, or a preference for and comfort in darkness. His photographs do not offer familiar faces or landscapes; there is no evident cultural or psychological framework for the viewer to build their response. Rather, the lack of specificity and sense of timelessness reminds us that all photographs are constructions of reality that produce various interpretations relative to each viewer. Chiarenza’s work invites individual reflection by forcing us to examine the subliminal workings of the mind. In these photographs, nothing is absolute, leaving all realities subject to each observer.
This exhibition is curated by VMFA Director and CEO Alex Nyerges. These works were all a generous gift of the artist.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Lucy and Sergio Amato, Janice and Kelly Cain, Karen and David Jones, Donna and Richard Lawhon, Debbie and Ben Lewis, Ally and Joe Leizer, Nancy and Rob Spilman and Lynwood Artists
Charlie Brouwer and Jennifer L. Hand collaborated to create Leaves of the Tree, a unique exhibition based on life-giving tree leaves.
The title of the exhibition has many connotations for both artists. Their individual and collaborative works have always shared a general concern for humanity's relationship with nature and frequently depict trees, leaves, landscapes and skies. The title also alludes to their familial relationship as father and daughter.
An overarching concept of the exhibition is that we are all leaves of one universal Tree of Life. This is as timely as it is timeless. It reflects the artists’ interest in making art that inspires a sense of community and equality amongst all peoples as we strive to live together on this earth we call home.
The installation includes hundreds of life-size leaves sewn from donated fabric, suspended from the ceiling and surrounding a large wooden tree trunk form that extends from the museum’s lobby into the galleries.
Admission Free
Sponsored by Lucy and Sergio Amato, Janice and Kelly Cain, Karen and David Jones, Donna and Richard Lawhon, Debbie and Ben Lewis, Ally and Joe Leizer, Nancy and Rob Spilman and Lynwood Artists
Drawn to things that have layers of history, Leslie Pearson is a scavenger for lost or forgotten things. Her work includes many found objects, from handwritten letters, journals and old books to rusty metal, postage stamps, buttons, teeth, animal bones and bits of fabric. Pearson likes to imagine the stories that these treasures hold. She also finds inspiration in organic forms found within the natural world such as pods, seeds, nests, eggs and shells—mostly for the metaphor they hold as keepers, protectors and incubators.
Combining traditional sewing, embroidery and embellishing techniques and materials with found objects, Jennifer Reis creates decorative, iconic objects that exist as female power figures. Her textile works are hand-sewn and beaded, created through a slow-art process; The creative act serving as a meditative process. Reis's work concerns the female form as an ornamented and empowered form existing within a ritualized context. Her work is inspired and informed by fashion, feminism and a Catholic aesthetic rooted in her upbringing as a German-American.
Admission Free
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