Author: Sarah Lawson

Mid-month is usually a pretty quiet time in a local art gallery. First Fridays crowds have long since returned home and the promise of free wine and cheese is a faint memory. But the downtown Charlottesville gallery scene isn’t dead between opening and closing receptions. Many would argue that this is the best time to enjoy an exhibit, when no one else is paying attention.

Absent the hordes, you can actually see the art on display. That’s the reason you went to the gallery in the first place, right? Well go ahead, get an eyeful. Having a gallery to yourself is an easily attainable luxury. It’s a unique privilege to have time and space to consider the way the art works together to form the exhibition experience as a whole. Most exhibits benefit from this extra reflection, but this is especially true for “Paper Works,” the current exhibition at Warm Springs Gallery.

Curated by gallery owner Barbara Buhr and her assistant, Elizabeth Flood, this exhibit brings together work by six women artists: Diane Ayott, Meredith Fife Day, Barbara Grossman, Sydney Licht, Marlene Rye and Eve Stockton. All are new to the gallery, and were hand-picked for their unique, well-matched work. Buhr considers herself an art dealer and curator, with more emphasis on the latter.

“Curating takes passion, curiosity and understanding,” she said. “Someone once told me that a good curator is like a good chef. They understand the community’s needs—and fulfill and challenge them. My goal is to make good art available to a wide audience, and to give exposure to undiscovered talent. In turn, collectors want artists who are pushing new ideas, the medium, forward.”

In curating “Paper Works” these factors were given due consideration, resulting in an exhibit that is aesthetically exciting for a casual viewer but also challenging and innovative for the avid collector. “We sought out these six artists specifically for their works on paper,” said Flood. “I found myself so drawn in by their vibrations of color, and the overall energy and movement of the work. The tension of pattern, color and shifting planes within the work really tie them together.”

Indeed, when viewing the exhibit, one immediately notices the lyrical appeal of the ordinary butting up against the magic of the mundane. Each of the artists employs techniques that play with and within the confines of reality, simultaneously representing and challenging it through the use of color, texture and subject.

For example, Stockton’s scientifically inspired woodcut prints embrace a playful approach towards biological representation. They also exemplify a variance and division within existence, using colors that suggest an augmented reality. “A close look at my imagery can reveal dichotomies such as order/chaos, microbial/monumental and familiar/otherworldly,” she said.

Day’s collage paintings also walk the line between two worlds—in this case the external experience of vision and the inner experience of memory. “Wallpapers run the aesthetic gamut—faux brick, athletic team emblems, stuffed teddy bears, you name it,” said Day. “Some, especially those based on historical designs and patterns such as calico, evoke a kind of visual poetry for me. Using these wallpapers is a nod to my inner life, and the memories through which it is filtered.”

Though all of the artists explore similar themes of tension caused by divisions within reality, their techniques are different enough that each visitor will find one artist whose work speaks to them more readily. For me, that is Marlene Rye. Her use of color in portraying seemingly traditional scenes of nature is arresting.

Rye isn’t bashful about this playfulness. “I work hard to create a visual tension,” she said. “The shapes, colors, forms and line push and pull against each other.” This tugging creates a very real sense of movement in each painting. Looking at her work, I come back time and time again to the bend of a certain sapling’s trunk in this painting, the sharp edge of a leaf in that one. Throughout, Rye uses a range of colors that is at once ethereal and yet familiar.

“I purposefully use a palette that is highly saturated so as to heighten the feeling of magic,” she said. “My colors are noticed in nature, but keyed up to be more extreme. The scale is intended to be ambiguous so as to invite the viewer to change sizes when looking at it, something I remember doing as a child when in the woods myself.”

While looking at these paintings head on, it’s easy to imagine walking through and under the graceful lines of their foliage. I get lost in childlike wonder. And it’s this immersive experience of art that only comes with the freedom to sit with an exhibit, to breathe it in, away from the distractions of a crowd.

“Paper Works” will remain on display at Warm Springs Gallery through the end of March.

Aspiring yogis and curious connoisseurs of contemporary art, unite! Second Street Gallery is hosting another installment of the monthly Second Saturday Yoga Art Grooves series that launched in the fall of 2014. A collaboration between Opal Yoga and Second Street Gallery, each event in the series is “its own unique happening, a collusion of artist, art, curation and a particular teacher’s class,” said Opal Yoga owner and instructor, Karen Thomas.

Having a hard time picturing what it’s like to stretch and sweat in the white box of the gallery? Though galleries and museums are sometimes seen as pristine venues that don’t allow visitors to touch anything, contemporary art and yoga actually have plenty in common. “Both disciplines require going into the zone to complete the process and bring something from that place back into the world,” said Second Street’s Tosha Grantham. “Everyone has the freedom to engage.” In fact, the partnering of yoga with contemporary art begins to seem quite natural the more one thinks about it.

“While our art cannot, as we wish it could, save us from wars, privation, envy, greed, old age, or death, it can revitalize us amidst it all,” wrote renowned author Ray Bradbury. So too, yoga.

Grantham views the collaboration as an opportunity for “expanding into art-friendly communities that may not visit the gallery on a regular basis, but had expressed interest.” Similar events take place at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke and plenty of other arts venues around the state. In fact, Second Street Gallery is participating in an informal movement to invite people into galleries for more than just art. Exploring and expanding the idea of the gallery as a community art space, many galleries around the world are opening their doors to diverse programming like yoga, dance classes and other non-traditional events. Not only do activities like these begin to wear away at perceived barriers to cultural experiences, they also provide new ways to engage with art.

And local instructors keep this in mind while planning the sessions at Second Street. Thomas confirms this as one of the foundational ideas of the series. “The idea is to encourage teachers to spend some time at the gallery with the exhibit that they’ll be teaching, with the suspicion that the art will consciously and unconsciously inform the yoga classes in terms of poses offered, philosophical themes, and musical selections,” she said. Lynsie McKeown is owner of Awakening Balance Yoga and will lead the February 14 yoga session. An important part of McKeown’s planning is “visiting the gallery to view the art and learn more about the artist in order to gain inspiration for the flow that I’ll be teaching.”

McKeown is shaping her lesson around an exhibit of new work by Yeni Mao, titled “The Conqueror.” Mao is a Canadian-born artist who studied at The Art Institute of Chicago and now lives and works in New York. He has exhibited and participated in residencies around the world.

Featuring Mao’s most recent work—some pieces completed just a few days ago—this exhibit is centered on an exploration of Genghis Khan. Well, not exactly the Great Khan himself. Rather, Mao reflects, “I would say the interest lies not in actually Genghis Khan but the representation of his story.” As he focused on three films about Genghis Khan that were made in the last six decades, Mao found that “they became markers of time themselves, because the era they were made in was written all over them. I mean, the great John Wayne in yellowface, it’s comical. Of course, it’s a history that is somewhat fictionalized. I wanted to look at that fictionalization, and in turn, do it once again myself.”

To provide structure in this examination, Mao used the Fibonacci number sequence as a lens to distort and filter each film, challenging the narrative represented in each as well as the historical veracity of beliefs about Khan.The resulting video, sculpture and letterpress prints are literally, as well as symbolically, layered and complex.

Even if you have visited the gallery recently, the yoga event is an opportunity to experience the work anew. “Working at SSG, I see the exhibitions every day but getting on the mat with instruction inspired by the exhibition, allows for a totally new perspective and experience of the artwork,” said Second Street’s outreach and operations manager, Erica Barnes. The current exhibit should be no exception to this.

Second Saturday Yoga Art Grooves will take place at Second Street Gallery on February 14 from 3-4:15pm. For additional details or to reserve your spot in advance, visit www.secondstreetgallery.org. Walk-ins are also welcome. The gallery will remain open to visitors who are interested in viewing the exhibit without participating in the yoga event, and Yeni Mao’s work exhibited in “The Conqueror” will remain on display through February 28 during normal gallery hours.

What other non-traditional art forms fit in a gallery? Tell us in the comments.

It’s all too frequent that I overhear someone mention that she’d “love to go to the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, if only it wasn’t so far away.” To put this in perspective, the drive from downtown Charlottesville to the museum takes about 10 minutes. It’s roughly double that if you ride the public bus. Remember though: The Kluge-Ruhe is the only museum in the U.S. dedicated to the exhibition and study of Australian Aboriginal art.

This means that you could drive all the way to New York (seven hours) or Los Angeles (37 hours) and still not have access to the exhibits and educational opportunities that the short drive to the Kluge-Ruhe enables. Beginning this month, one of those offerings is an exhibit titled “New Narratives: Papunya Tjupi Prints with Cicada Press.” The exhibit features 14 prints that were created through an eight-year partnership between two Australian arts organizations, the Papunya Tjupi Art Center and Cicada Press, a printmaking studio.

Home to the art center, the Papunya community in Australia’s Northern Territory is notable as the birthplace of Western Desert art. This movement is best known for its iconic dot paintings and for bringing international attention to Aboriginal art in the 1970s and ’80s. Largely credited to a teacher in the Papunya settlement, Geoffrey Bardon, the movement began through his efforts to encourage indigenous artists to use acrylic paint, rather than a traditional medium like sand or body paint. Though he introduced this new medium, Bardon was careful to foster the unique Aboriginal style of visual expression rather than teaching other art techniques. Today, that respect for tradition is passed down to the next generation by the elder artists at Papunya Tjupi.

Of the more than 100 emerging artists working at the Papunya Tjupi Art Center, many are descendants of the original Western Desert artists. They continue in the artistic tradition as a way to preserve and depict their ancestral narratives, called dreamings. The patterns and iconography found in their paintings are traditional in Aboriginal culture, but paint provides a more permanent and transportable display, allowing for a broader audience and enduring archive.

After playing a significant role in establishing the Papunya Tjupi Art Center, Aboriginal art scholar Vivien Johnson reached out to Sydney’s Cicada Press in 2006 to propose a partnership built to once again bring a new medium to Aboriginal art. Years later, the partnership between Cicada Press and Papunya Tjupi Art Center continues to combine Aboriginal painting with printmaking.

“Much like any artist who is exposed to a new medium in which to express their content, there are challenges to face,” said Cicada Press Director Michael Kempson. “While etching is a medium with several centuries of tradition, it is in the eyes of this next generation of artists at Papunya a new medium.”

Another challenge is the 36-hour drive that separates the Papunya Tjupi Art Center and Cicada Press. This distance means the collaborative process takes time and happens infrequently, for now. Kempson hopes to establish a self-sustaining print workshop at the art center one day. Until then, artists are lucky if they get to work together in person once a year. When they do meet, a painter discusses her vision with a printmaker, who then attempts to translate that vision into a completed piece of work.

The “New Narratives” exhibit showcases these works and demonstrates how a new medium changes the technique of representation without altering the meaning. Visually, the effect of the multimedia work is invigorating. And like much of Aboriginal art, the pieces can be viewed in a strictly abstract sense or as a narrative.

“You can see some of the standard symbols associated with Western Desert painting, concentric circles, which represent places and, of course, dots which are a kind of conventional motif,” said Kluge-Ruhe Director Margo Smith. “Yet there is a feeling of experimentation in these works. The intaglio process adds considerable depth to the two-dimensional prints, the same way that layering of dots does in paintings from this area.”

Though Cicada Press was established in 2004 and has been working with Papunya Tjupi since 2006, its relationship with Charlottesville only began in 2013, through a group exhibit at the Kluge-Ruhe. “That was when I learned about Michael Kempson’s work with the artists from Papunya,” said Smith. “The Kluge-Ruhe Collection contains quite a lot of work from Papunya so we were interested to see new developments by these artists and their descendants.” Since then, Kempson has continued to strengthen his organization’s relationship with our city, curating the exhibit at the Kluge-Ruhe and collaborating on another print project with art students at UVA.

“Kluge-Ruhe is a very significant and highly respected museum in the eyes of Australians who have a commitment to Australian Aboriginal art,” said Kempson, making it clear that, even with a roughly 24-hour flight from Sydney, the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection is well worth the trip.

“New Narratives” will remain on display through mid-May. Michael Kempson will give an in-person talk about the exhibit on March 26.

How far would you travel for art? Tell us in the comments.

Paul Handler is difficult to shoehorn. Despite possessing uncommon creativity, he subscribes to no single genre in his pursuits. It is rare, if not impossible, to find work that is attributed solely to his particular genius. Rather, Handler’s name has been made through his behind-the-scenes work in support of artistic co-conspirator Mara Sprafkin—until recently.

In 2014, Handler took the lead in organizing the New City Artist Exchange in which 17 local artists created limited edition work to share within the group. Though Sprafkin helped inspire the idea, local nonprofit New City Arts offered a home and administrative support for the project early in the planning process. At that point, Sprafkin took a backseat, and Handler, ahem, handled it from there. “Paul is pretty open for thinking outside the box,” noted Sprafkin. So, it is fitting that New City Arts’ Executive Director Maureen Brondyke managed certain project logistics, including the selection of boxes in which to package the artwork.

Since Handler was still largely unknown in the local arts community at the beginning, Brondyke also provided guidance and expertise in selecting the participating artists. While shaping and coordinating the Artist Exchange, however, Handler developed close relationships with other Charlottesville artists, and encouraged them to do the same. “The artist community in Charlottesville is pretty disparate. This is why it was important that all the participating artists were Charlottesville-based. This was really a chance for us to begin to connect with each other,” said Sprafkin.

The group of artists who piloted the project are Hannah Barefoot, Kendall Cox, Dean Dass, Amanda Finn, Stephanie Fishwick, Jessica Lee, Matt Leech, Victoria Long, Malena Magnolia, Joy Meyer, Matt Pamer, Pamela Pecchio, Katie Pennock, Laura Snyder, Ashley Walton and Sprafkin. Together, their works represent a diversity of tastes and local skills, including photography, painting, drawing, calligraphy, textile design and printmaking

“One of the most exciting things was that artists were at the center of it; they made and received artwork for and from each other, which resulted in new art and new friendships,” said Brondyke.

At an event in November, each artist received one set of work, containing a piece by each participant. One set was also donated to The Haven’s winter art auction to support the local day shelter, and another set will be archived by New City Arts. When Brondyke also offered to have New City Arts host an exhibit of the work from the Artist Exchange, Sprafkin said that she and Handler “decided it was important to let the community see some of the great and interesting artwork made by local artists. Many of the artists in the exchange don’t show regularly in Charlottesville but show elsewhere in the country and internationally.”

All 17 works will be on public display in January at the WVTF and Radio IQ Studio Gallery on Water Street. Individual works will be available for purchase at an opening reception on January 9 from 5-7pm. Sprafkin summed up the mutual satisfaction from the collaboration: “As Paul said, it was surprising to just see so much wonderful work. When you ask people to participate in something and it ends up happening, it is really amazing.”

Entering the room, two sounds compete for your attention: the steady hum of sewing machines and a Destiny’s Child song amplified by unseen speakers. It’s Friday at Crescent Halls, a housing facility operated by the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority, and that means that a group of local quilters is hard at work in the recreation room. In one way or another, each woman in the room has ties to Crescent Halls, though they’re not all residents there.

Ruth Williams recalls how she joined the quilting group: “I came down here one day to visit my cousin and one of the ladies asked, ‘Why don’t you come sew?’” Similarly, when I first met many of these women four years ago, I was greeted by the same welcoming attitude.

I’ve always sewn, but never quilted. That didn’t matter; I was encouraged to come by on Fridays to learn the craft. I regret to say that I haven’t taken them up on the offer (yet), but the fact remains that I greatly admire each of these talented women.

Over the years, the group has fluctuated in size, and even had three men participate for a while. Recently though, membership has held steady with seven members who meet each week to share ideas, skills and fellowship. This month they will exhibit their work at CitySpace.

The origins of this quilting group can be traced back more than 10 years to an idea from one of the current members, Teresa Stinnie. “Holly [Edwards] said ‘What can we do to get people involved?’ and I said ‘Holly, let’s try quilting,” Stinnie remembered. “Nobody ever did quilting here.”

From the start, they had no trouble creating interest in the group because many of the quilters, then and now, had mothers or grandmothers who quilted or sewed. “Sewing is in our blood,” said Williams. “It’s in my family. My mom used to make quilts by hand.” However, this generational knowledge wasn’t always passed down, and new group members often needed to learn the basics.

As a result, Helen Stevens has taught many of them the craft of quilting. Whether it’s made of diamonds, hexagons, squares or octagons, the heart of a quilt lies in the pattern. Once that’s decided, the colors and patterns of material can be selected. Patches of fabric are cut and assembled into blocks, which are then stitched together to form the overall pattern. When the group started, they opted for hand-stitching but have switched to sewing machines. Member Cynthia Walker takes care of the maintenance for the group’s machines—skills she learned while working in a sewing factory in Danville years ago.

To put the final touches on, the outer edge is finished with a fabric binding and the quilt is given a name. Some of the quilts in the upcoming exhibit have names like “Butter Créme Twist,” “Swimming Upstream” and “It Takes A Village.” Others are more literally descriptive, such as “Orange Boxes,” “Pink Blossoms” or “Christmas Holly.” Discussing one of her quilts, Williams said she named it “Urban Block” because it “almost looks like project housing.”

In addition to mentoring new quilters, Stevens still finds time for her own work and estimates that she’s made more than 200 quilts since she began quilting. But she rarely keeps her own handiwork. “I don’t have any at home of my own. Not a one. I make them and give them away because I feel that somebody needs them more than I do.” Often she donates her quilts to local dialysis centers or gives them to family and friends. Other group members follow suit, including Francine Payne, who donates many of her quilts to organizations serving vulnerable communities around the world as well as to her church. “My quilts have gone to South Africa, the West Indies and Syria. This year I’m going to do some throws for my church and they’re going to be donated to some of the homebound people in the community.”

Though some of the quilters are retired, a number spend the rest of the week working. However, all of them hold their weekly quilting time as sacred. “The only time I sew is on Fridays,” Williams said. “You work 10-hour days and when you get home it’s 7 or 8 at night and you just don’t feel like pulling the sewing machine out that late.” Stinnie can relate. “It’s an outlet, so I come here and nothing else matters until I leave back out that door,” she said. For Walker, quilting is a way to enjoy the community she has with the other women in the group. “I love to see their quilts because everyone has their own style and their own colors and it’s just fun.”

An opening reception for the fourth annual Crescent Halls quilt exhibit, sponsored by Piedmont Council for the Arts, will be held at CitySpace on December 5 at 5:30pm. The quilts in the exhibit will be available for purchase and on display through January 16.

Do you practice a heritage artform?

Tell us about it in the comments.