“Picasso, Lydia, & Friends, Vol. V.,” on view at Les Yeux du Monde through October 27, features works by William Bennett, Anne Chesnut, Dean Dass, Rosemarie Fiore, Lydia Csato Gasman, Sanda Iliescu, Megan Marlatt, Pablo Picasso, David Summers, and Russ Warren. Photo courtesy of Les Yeux du Monde.
Opportunities to see works by a modern master of art in an intimate gallery setting do not often arise in our part of the world. Les Yeux du Monde provides just that with its current exhibition, “Picasso, Lydia, & Friends, Vol. V.”
The show brings together six prints by Pablo Picasso with contemporary works from eight artists influenced by the aesthetics and academic contributions of the Spanish artist and the acclaimed Picasso scholar Lydia Csato Gasman, respectively. The collected work functions as a way to share world-class masterworks with the Charlottesville public, while also honoring the legacy of Gasman, LYDM founder Lyn Bolen Warren’s late mentor.
“Apart from Picasso—whose work is included in the exhibition, given it was the focus of Gasman’s scholarship—each of the exhibiting artists personally knew Gasman, many having been her colleagues in UVA’s art department,” says Les Yeux de Monde Director Hagan Tampellini. “Each credits Gasman or Picasso with influencing their work or thought in some way, which can be felt in the experience of the show.”
Picasso’s prints present the viewer with unexpected images. Three still-life lithographs—atypical examples from the artist’s oeuvre—depict fruit, flowers, and glassware, with evidence of the artist’s hand used to manipulate the ink. Two lyrical etchings, illustrating Picasso’s muse Marie-Thérèse Walter with delicate line work, flank a visually heavy aquatint portraying a goat skull. The juxtaposition of youth and vivacity is striking against the weight of inevitable decay.
Installation view from “Picasso, Lydia, & Friends, Vol. V.,” on view at Les Yeux du Monde through October 27. Photo courtesy of Les Yeux du Monde.
The goat skull is complemented by Russ Warren’s “Faces,” a large-scale acrylic painting featuring dozens of skull-like visages. The notion of death is echoed again in Gasman’s “The Angel of History,” which employs thick impasto, gestural marks, and a saturated palette of colors. A sheet of aluminum serves as both the sky and a stand-in for aircraft engaged in wartime bombings. The depiction of angels is carried over in a suite of elegant ink drawings by Sanda Iliescu, which also connect beautifully to Picasso’s etchings through similarity in line weight and simplicity of form.
Another exciting example of curation occurs between print and painting, where David Summers’ “New Light on Picasso’s Snack, plus Water” hangs next to Picasso’s “Pommes, Verre, et Couteau” (Apples, Glass, and Knife). Here we see how the artists attune to the same subject matter: Summers the painter traffics in the representation of light, while Picasso as printmaker is far more concerned with form.
Throughout the show, pops of vibrant color punctuate the visual rhythms produced by monochromatic prints, drawings, and paintings—alluding to acts of both love and violence. LYDM presents a balanced exhibition design keeping the viewer engaged, and seeking out both formal and thematic connections, in the disparate yet related works that grace the welcoming gallery space.
Ilya Tovbis announced the 37th annual Virginia Film Festival program to an audience at The Jefferson Theater on Tuesday evening. Staff photo.
Stories of survival, the trials and triumphs of friends and families, animated offerings, and films from around the world. The 37th Virginia Film Festival brings together an incredibly diverse program of features, shorts, and documentaries for your consideration.
The festival takes place from October 30–November 3 at various theaters throughout Charlottesville, opening with Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or-winning work Anora, starring Mikey Madison as a sex worker from Brooklyn caught up in a Cinderella story after impulsively marrying the son of a Russian oligarch.
Beyond some of the highest-profile films of the festival season, this year’s slate boasts an expanded look at genre-defying movies that herald the future of cinema. “This year we are looking at more films exploring the liminal space between fiction and nonfiction as well as at different cross-genre modes of telling stories,” VAFF Artistic Director Ilya Tovbis says. “We have always focused on diversity in our programming but this year we are taking that even further with an increased focus on animation, a deeper dive into horror and genre films, and an overall eye toward looking ahead at what is to come in cinema.”
A series of panel discussions featuring industry experts, including actors, directors, producers, and writers, lends context to the films with notable guest artists including actor Lamorne Morris (Saturday Night, “New Girl”), director Tracie Laymon (Bob Trevino Likes It), and author Roxana Robinson (Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life).
Robinson’s book serves as the basis for Georgia O’Keeffe: The Brightness of Light, an enlightening documentary from Charlottesville’s Academy Award-winning filmmakers Ellen and Paul Wagner, which chronicles the life, art, and legacy of the “Mother of American Modernism.”
This year’s centerpiece film, Emilia Pérez, from Academy Award-nominee Jacques Audiard (The Prophet), stars Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, and Karla Sofía Gascón in a compelling cross-genre crime drama/family story/movie musical. It won the Jury Prize for director at the Cannes Film Festival.
Tickets go on sale to the public at noon on Friday, October 11. Donors get early access. Visit virginiafilmfestival.org for more information.
Local artist Somé Louis has found space for exploration and expression by participating in CBAC exhibitions. Photo by Eze Amos.
When you want to initiate change—real change—it’s hard to do it alone. The time, effort, versatility, and resources it takes to affect progress as an individual requires a level of passion and privilege most of us cannot afford when there are children to raise and bills to be paid. But when change needs to happen, people have a tendency to step out and find each other.
When you’re part of a collective, you’re part of a democratic collaboration of efforts. You find ways to work together, to do what’s best for everyone involved. You embody gestalt, and organize yourselves into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, enabling the collective to achieve advances that extend beyond itself.
This is exactly the kind of work the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective is achieving: initiating change for the betterment of our community, and for Black creatives throughout the commonwealth. The drive to open up opportunities that explore and evoke the essence of Black culture is on full view in the CBAC’s upcoming exhibition “Sugah: Black Love Endures,” which opens at McGuffey Art Center on September 6.
Community commitments
The story of the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective began in 2020, with another artist-run cooperative, the McGuffey Art Center. Two members of McGuffey’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee reached out to Black creatives in the area, seeking individuals interested in curating an exhibition of works by Black artists. Instead of an individual taking the helm, a small group coalesced and agreed to curate the show together. The process served as a catalyst for the creation of the CBAC, which debuted “Water: The Agony and Ecstasy of the Black Experience” in 2021, its first curatorial effort at McGuffey.
“Love is in the Hair,” by “Sugah: Black Love Endures” exhibiting artist Cherrish Smith. Image curtesy of the CBAC.
Since then, the CBAC has partnered with the arts center to mount exhibitions each year, including the 2022 show “Lay My Burdens Down,” and 2023’s “Blackity Black Black,” an embrace of quintessentially Black aesthetics. In this relationship between hosting venue and curatorial collective, McGuffey sponsors the shows, while the CBAC creates open calls, curates the exhibitions, and works directly with the exhibiting artists. McGuffey members help with the art installation process, publicity, and—crucially—provide gallery space for the shows to take place.
“This partnership allows us to help amplify Black art and provide a means of sharing Black art with McGuffey members and visitors as well as helps broaden the diversity of work and artists showing work at McGuffey,” notes CBAC member Kori Price. When asked about the partnership between the CBAC and MAC, Bill LeSueur, operations manager at McGuffey Art Center, added, “It’s mutually beneficial. The search for inspiration is continual. MAC will continue to support CBAC and open up opportunities for underrepresented artists. This establishes a model for future partnerships and additional collaborations.”
Progressive partnerships
As an untethered, volunteer-based collective of artists and art enthusiasts, the CBAC seeks out this type of community partnership to facilitate opportunities for artists in and around Charlottesville, centering Black voices and their creative work. While these opportunities most often take the form of exhibitions geared toward showcasing and selling artwork, the CBAC also aims to support artists by providing workshops to share skills and learn from each other, as well as critiques to provide feedback to creatives, and social gatherings such as community cookouts to strengthen existing relationships and foster new connections.
Tori Cherry, Leslie Taylor-Lillard, Kori Price, Benita Mayo, Kweisi Morris, Tobiah Mundt, Derrick J. Waller, and Mavis Waller currently make up the member roster of the Charlottesville Black Arts Collective. The CBAC is adamant about forming connections with community partners to expand the reach of Black artists throughout the greater- Charlottesville area—in addition to McGuffey, the group has established partnerships with Alamo Drafthouse, New City Arts, Second Street Gallery, and Studio Ix—creating platforms for their experiences to be shared through “a Black lens with clarity and creativity,” as Price puts it.
How sweet it is
Since its inception, the CBAC has focused on curating exhibitions and experiences around ideas that are unique or essential to Black culture. Themes that encourage the expression of Black joy have become especially important to the collective, like 2023’s “Blackity Black Black” and “Black Eyed Peas, Greens, and Cornbread”—an exhibition in celebration of new beginnings and the future—mounted at Studio Ix earlier this year. “Black love seemed like a natural next step for us,” says Price. “We all felt that the way in which love is expressed within the Black community was unique and were curious to see the ways in which artists might choose to depict and communicate love through their art.”
Richmond-based artist P. Muzi Branch’s “Bi-Cultural,” on exhibit in “Sugah: Black Love Endures.” Image curtesy of the CBAC.
Featuring works from P. Muzi Branch, Lizzie Brown, Chris Green, Jae Johnson, Leslie Lillard, Somé Louis, Tobiah Mundt, Maiya Pittman, Kori Price, Joshua Ray, Dorothy Rice, Cherrish Smith, and JaVori Warren, “Sugah” (pronounced SHU-gah) explores aspects of love related to the familial, the romantic, the self, and the cultural. Paintings, photographs, fiber arts, and mixed media works depicting affectionate embraces, acts of service, and cultural expressions define the look and feel of the exhibition.
Exhibiting artists Dorothy Rice and Cherrish Smith both chose to explore external identity markers in their respective works, “The Sisters Braid Love” and “Love is in the Hair.” In her exhibition application, Smith—the youngest artist in the show and a repeat participant in CBAC exhibitions—explained, “Black hair is art in itself … Black hair is love, and it helps me freely be me no matter how I choose to wear it!”
Drawing inspiration from Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss,” Lizzie Brown’s contribution to “Sugah” explores romantic love with a nod to art history. As the artist explains, “The intimacy, peace, and security shared between the two lovers is further emphasized through the use of circular motifs, which are symbolic of the wholeness and intricacies of their connection.”
Lizzie Brown’s “Intimacy: The Forehead Kiss” will be exhibited in “Sugah: Black Love Endures.” Image curtesy of the CBAC.
Local artist Somé Louis, who previously showed with the CBAC in “Blackity Black Black,” presents “Gestures of Play,” an embroidered handkerchief that captures the energy of childhood exuberance, documenting dance-like movements. The depiction of dance is “an act that binds me to my cousins and aunties in the Caribbean, who all studied dance, and understood movement through dance in a variety of ways,” Louis wrote in her exhibition application. Speaking on her experiences with the CBAC, Louis says, “It’s always great to find a space that allows for expression and exploration as an artist, which I have found as part of the CBAC exhibitions.”
Richmond-based artist P. Muzi Branch is also showing with the CBAC again after his inclusion in “Blackity Black Black.” Expressing the importance of the opportunities afforded by the collective, Branch asserts, “The CBAC group, through presenting thematic exhibitions, is affirming Black American visual art as a legitimate cultural genre that speaks for, informs about, and undergirds the Black community. African American visual art has unique ethnic norms, ideological themes, and aesthetic qualities that set it apart from all other culture-based art. The term ‘Black art’ is a cultural designation, not a racial one.”
Call and response
The affirmation of Black art and the expansion of cultural understanding and appreciation is at the heart of CBAC endeavors like “Sugah: Black Love Endures.” The benefits of this work extend beyond individual accolades and artistic achievements, impacting not just Black creative communities, but the entire Charlottesville community. As Price confirms, “The art in our shows is for everyone and provides a wonderful opportunity for patrons to explore new art and discover new artists.”
New exhibition opportunities attract new talent, enticing artists to show work in this area for the first time, or to show their work for the first time period. New artists bring new ideas, new expressions, new aesthetics to bear, and we all benefit by getting to see and experience novel examples of art and entertainment. New works creating stronger impacts on audiences bring new attention to an art scene. Viewers come to discover artists and works that resonate with them. New audiences strengthen creative communities by investing their time and resources into galleries and venues, which in turn use those investments to strengthen their programs that benefit artists and audiences, creating a mutually beneficial cycle of cultural and capital exchange.
It’s through this lens that the full scope of the CBAC’s efforts can be understood. The message behind many of the works in “Sugah: Black Love Endures” is that to feel love is to feel safe, secure, supported. When we show up for Black artists, we offer our support. We offer a sense of security and commitment to culture and community. We offer love, and may that love ever endure.
Exhibiting artist Kori Price in front of two panels of “Walking Dualities” at The Paramount Theater Third Street box office.
Photo by Alyssa Solares/The Paramount Theater.
On the 60th anniversary of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, The Paramount Theater launched a new exhibition series to draw attention to a painful period in United States history. The Third Street Box Office Project connects the theater to the work of acceptance, acknowledgment, and education around the legacy of racism and segregation in the city of Charlottesville, the South, and our nation as a whole.
“The goal of the Third Street Box Office Project [is] to reimagine the space in a way that allows our community to take pause and understand the magnitude of the history of this space,” says the theater’s Executive Director Julie Montross. “To reflect on the past injustices that the Civil Rights Act was meant to address and to look forward and consider the tremendous amount of work that still needs to be done. Our goal was also to invite the community to take an active role in this exercise.”
The theater opened in 1931 as a segregated building that required Black patrons to use a separate entrance on Third Street, restricting them to balcony seating with access to concessions and restrooms separate from white patrons, who entered the theater with convenience from Main Street.
Now, three local artists have been invited to mount work that initiates dialogue and fosters conversations around the past, present, and future of racial equality in our community. Each exhibition will run for three weeks, with Kori Price’s “Walking Dualities” on view from July 2–23, Tobiah Mundt’s “Shadows of the Past” from July 30–August 20, and Nick Brinen’s “Ascending Light” from August 27–September 17.
“I think the most important thing that I want to relate to people who come to visit the exhibition is the immediacy of the past and of history,” says Price. “It’s important that we keep around certain historical places and objects—like the Third Street box office—so that we can continue to bear witness to our city and country’s past of discrimination and inequality and understand that we have so much more work left to do.”
Unfortunately, an act of vandalism targeting Price’s artwork that occurred overnight between July 6 and 7 left “Walking Dualities” temporarily asunder. But the artist acted quickly, and in an inspired maneuver, she was able to reinstall the three photographic banners that comprise the exhibition with a nod to art history. In a social media post shared by the Paramount, Price explains, “It was important to me to repair and re-install my art as soon as possible and make sure that I didn’t hide the damage that had been done.” Inspired by the Japanese ceramic art tradition of Kintsugi, a method of repairing broken ceramics with lacquer and gold or silver dust, Price applied gold leafing to the damaged areas, creating “a metaphor for resiliency, fortitude, and healing.”
The gold accents that now adorn “Walking Dualities” weave in notions of value, soft strength, and the beauty within perceived imperfections. Their contrast with the black and white images create points of focus without distraction. They acknowledge violence but rise above it. Price’s exhibition is as much an occupation of space as a reclamation of one. The figures in her photographs are in motion but remain unmoved. The artistic techniques of trompe l’oeil and forced perspective utilized by the artist to place these figures in situ invite viewers to see themselves in relation to the bodies within Price’s banners. Here, the artwork puts the onus of understanding into a corporeal state, where mind and body reconcile meaning.
To help facilitate its commitment to showcasing the visual arts, the Paramount consulted with its neighbor, the nonprofit organization New City Arts. Executive Director Maureen Brondyke says her organization helped with the “nuts and bolts” of putting together the open call for exhibition proposals for the Third Street Box Office Project, including collaborating on the timeline and logistics of the call to ensure support for artists who might apply. NCA and the Paramount also encouraged applicants to consider how to honor the legacies of Black patrons forced to use the Third Street entrance and what capacities the historic landmark holds for “truth-telling” and “reimagining.”
The arts afford us opportunities to contextualize, recontextualize, and perform history in ways that break down barriers and connect individuals and communities across time and space. They allow us to be aspirational, reflective, and reflexive. The arts enable us to both effect and be affected—emotionally, spiritually, intellectually. These facets are at the heart of endeavors like the Third Street Box Office Project. As Brondyke affirms, “We believe that a vibrant community includes an abundance of arts and culture spaces, and that collaboration between these spaces creates a network of support needed for local artists to thrive and move our community toward a more just, beautiful future.”
“Colleen Rosenberry: Journey From Grief To Art” remains on view at Studio Ix through June 30.
Image courtesy of Studio Ix.
Following the sudden death of her youngest son, Colleen Rosenberry revived a painting practice she had cultivated in her youth but that she had let wane as the responsibilities of motherhood and work mounted. Seeking solace in her grief, Rosenberry turned to artistic expression.
In the gallery at Studio Ix, Rosenberry presents “Journey From Grief To Art,” a collection of paintings with subjects including landscapes, interior settings, cityscapes, and architectural studies. The show is unified by the connecting threads of loss, memory, and peace, as well as the impressionistic style employed by the artist, who cites Monet and Van Gogh as inspirations.
The scene set in “Breath” evokes a vigil, with a single light burning in remembrance of a pictured subject. We see the outline of an empty chair, vignetted by lamp light. There is warmth, but it only extends so far. The painting holds a second vignette, as this interior scene is couched within a view of the cosmos. Here, we gain the sense of how a small slice of life fits into the greater design of existence. At 14 by 12 inches, the size of the painting is intimate, pulling the viewer to look closer, drawing one into the scene.
“Breath” by Colleen Rosenberry, on view at Studio Ix. Image courtesy of Studio Ix.
“Guide into the Blooms” reinforces the notion of light as a beacon. A single lamp hanging from a shepherd’s crook stand drives home the idea of guiding and tending, but behind the lamp, the viewer is drawn into an overwhelming sea of flora. Tension is built between the tight, flat rendering of the lamppost against the loose and impressionistic flowers that fill the picture plane.
A third piece trafficking in the theme of illumination, “Welcome into the Light,” offers a warmer composition dominated by yellow hues. There is warmth, but also an air of absence. The room is lit and inviting, but the table is empty; there are no dishes or silverware, no remnants of a meal or game of cards, just a solitary vase of flowers. The chair at the head of the table glows, perhaps alluding to a privileged position that will remain unfilled.
Together, these three works adeptly convey the presence of absence, where we see the trappings of habituation, but the inhabitants are nowhere to be found.
Other works in “Journey From Grief To Art” feature water and bridges, symbols of cleansing and “crossing over.” Still others focus on sunrises and sunsets, periods of transition and rebirth within a cycle of brilliance and darkness. Taken together, this collection of paintings is a strong illustration of the exhibition title, where raw emotion gives way to aesthetic understanding.
