Tag: Fine Arts

Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library 2450 Old Ivy Rd. “Their World As Big As They Made It: Looking Back at the Harlem Renaissance” showcases the visionary works of writers, artists, and thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance. Plus, other permanent exhibitions. 

Angelo Jewelry 220 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Diamonds & Rust,” mixed-media paintings by Patte Reider Ormsby. Through October 28.

The Bridge PAI 306 E. Main St. A First Fridays After Dark dance party. $10, 8:30pm. 

Chroma Projects Inside Vault Virginia, Third St. SE. In Chroma’s Micro Gallery, “The Same River Twice,” small and complex prints on paper by Edie Read. In Vault Virginia’s Great Hall South, Read’s accompanying large-scale abstract wall forms, “Wing.” In Vault Virginia’s Great Front Hall, “Ornatus Mundi,” works by Richmond artist Sara Clark. Through October 27. First Fridays opening.

City Clay 700 Harris St., Ste. 104. “Dysfunctional Teacup Show,” a mixed-media show of unusual and unexpected teacups. 

The Connaughton Gallery McIntire School of Commerce, Rouss & Robertson Halls. “Landscapes and Georgia O’Keeffe Revisited,” alkyd oil paints on canvas, MDF panels, and textile/multi-media works by Eric T. Allen and the Fiber and Stitch Art Collective. Through December 8.

The Create Gallery InBio, 700 Harris St. “Of,” watercolor and photography by Fisher Samuel Harris. Through October. First Fridays opening.

Crozet Artisan Depot 5791 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. “Backyard Nature Studies,” ceramic art by Corinna Anderson, and “Change of Seasons,” photography by Staunton artist Dale Carlson.

C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Beyond the Burn,” original designs by pyrographer Genevieve Story. Through October. First Fridays opening. 

Dovetail Design & Cabinetry 1740 Broadway St., Ste 3. “The Arc Studio Group Show,” acrylic and mixed-media works by artists at The Arc of the Piedmont. First Fridays celebration. 

Elmaleh Gallery Campbell Hall, UVA Grounds. “Like the Waters We Rise,” posters from the front lines of the climate justice movement, 1968–2022. Through October 29.

The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd., UVA Grounds. Exhibitions include “Look Three Ways: Maya Painted Pottery,” “Processing Abstraction,” and “N’Dakinna Landscapes Acknowledged.”

Grace Estate Winery 5273 Mt. Juliet Farm, Crozet. “Local Colors,” plein-air paintings of central Virginia’s wine country by Jane Goodman. First Fridays opening.

Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of UVA 400 Worrell Dr. “Three Women from Wirrimanu,” paintings by Black Indigenous women artists Eubena Nampitjin, Muntja Nungurrayi, and Lucy Yukenbarri Napanangka. Through December 3.

Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Canopy,” abstract works by Susan McAlister. Through October 29. Luncheon and artist talk on October 15 at 12:45pm

The Local Restaurant 824 Hinton Ave. “True Nature,” oil paintings by Kris Bowmaster. Through October.

McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In the Smith Gallery, “Interior Spaces,” oil and watercolor floral and landscape paintings by Marcia Mitchell. In the first-floor galleries, “If You Have Ever Gone To The Woods With Me, I Must Love You Very Much,” works by Lindsay Heider Diamond, and “Turtles All The Way Down,” oil paintings by Alan Kindler. In the second-floor galleries, “LANDSCAPE: Creating a Sense of Place,” an all-members exhibition of painting, photography, sculpture, collage, and three-dimensional art. First Fridays celebration.

New City Arts 114 Third St. NE. “growing out of season,” mixed-media installation and vignette storytelling by Sri Kodakalla. Through October 26. First Fridays opening.

Phaeton Gallery 114 Old Preston Ave. “closeness,” landscapes composed of intricate arrangements of dried paint scraps by William Mason Lord. Through October 29. First Fridays opening.

Pro Camera 711 W. Main St. “The Queens of Queen City” by Michael O. Snyder features photographs exploring the courage, risks, and repercussions of openly expressing LGBTQ identities in rural, conservative America. Through December 2. First Fridays opening.

PVCC Gallery V. Earl Dickinson Building, 501 College Dr. In the North Gallery, “Beyond the Office Door,” works from staff and faculty at PVCC outside the art department. In the South Gallery, the Annual Faculty exhibition curated by Fenella Belle. Through November 4.

Quirk Gallery 499 W. Main St. “Colorscapes,” a collaboration between a father and daughter, Tom West and Cate West Zahl. Through November 5. 

Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. In the Main Gallery, “After We Are Gone,” new works by Mike Egan. In the Dové Gallery, “Tales of Min’umbra,” shadow art by Tania L. Yager.

Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital 500 Martha Jefferson Dr. A multimedia exhibition featuring works by Ellen Osborne, Katharine Eisaman Maus, and Juliette Swenson. Opens October 10.

Studio Ix 969 Second St. SE. “All Black Everything,” works using mostly black or all black materials by Benita Mayo, Leslie A Taylor Lillard, Kweisi Morris, Kori Price, and Tobiah Mundt. First Fridays opening.

Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello 931 Thomas Jefferson Pkwy. An exhibition that includes a rare engraving of the Declaration of Independence. Through December.

UVA Medical Center In the main lobby, 1215 Lee St. A multimedia group show by the BozART Fine Art Collective. Through November 7. 

Visible Records 1740 Broadway St. TechnoSonics, an experimental turntablism workshop and performance with guest artists Maria Chavez and Jordi Wheeler. October 14.

Coral reefs are wondrous marvels of natural beauty. They are both living things and ecosystems for a myriad assortment of other creatures, and are a vital link in the chain of life. It’s estimated that 1 billion people benefit from coral reefs in the form of food, coastal protection, clean sea water, and income from tourism and fishing.

With “House on Fire” at Quirk Gallery, Kiara Pelissier uses glass to draw attention to the existential threat the earth and all its inhabitants are facing as our climate changes and temperatures rise. Pelissier focuses on the devastation happening to coral reefs around the globe. These beautiful animals are struggling to survive in an environment that is becoming untenable. Mass bleaching events, unknown until the 1980s, are now common occurrences in our oceans, which absorb 93 percent of the heat trapped by CO2.

Each coral is made up of polyps that are attached to a reef at one end, and have an open mouth surrounded by tentacles at the other. One of the most remarkable things about coral is its symbiotic relationship with algae. Each coral polyp contains millions of algae cells, called zooxanthellae. The coral provides them with an environment in which to thrive and photosynthesize, which, in turn, helps sustain the coral. At night, corals become active, extending their stinging tentacles to capture floating plankton.

Coral polyps are actually transparent—it’s the zooxanthellae that provides the pigment that gives coral its vivid and varied color. Coral can be hard or soft. It lives and grows connected to other corals. Soft corals resemble plants. Hard corals use the calcium in seawater to form outer skeletons that become the structural basis of a coral reef. Bleached coral is not dead, but without the algae inside, it is more at risk for starvation and disease, and if the situation doesn’t improve, it will die.

Taking the title of the show from Greta Thunberg’s famous 2019 Davos speech, Pelissier continues the metaphor of the burning house with the introduction of a portion of a roof. Her intention is to bring what’s happening out of sight, beneath the sea, quite literally home. Pelissier’s roof is mostly white, interspersed with cobalt, amethyst, and lime-green tiles—the white alludes to bleaching and the other distinctive colors appear in certain corals when they experience heatstroke. The message is clear: The roof, our home, our planet, like the coral, is in mortal peril.

The heatstroke colors appear again in the dramatic sheaths of glass rods at the opposite end of the gallery. It isn’t until you see that these pieces are all titled “Scream” that you note the urgency to the upward thrust of the rods. Pelissier wants us to understand the direness of the situation: The coral—out of sight and out of mind—is screaming for our help.

“Anthropocene” refers to our current era of human domination, and features drooping clear polyps placed against a mirror. From a visual viewpoint, it’s a dazzling display of silver and glass, but it’s also a powerful memento mori. The polyps, drained of color and deflated, bear little resemblance to healthy coral. They’ve expelled the algae living in their tissues as a reaction to stress. Transparency is the final stage in coral’s death spiral before all “flesh” is gone and only a skeletal superstructure remains. It’s impossible to look at this piece without seeing ourselves reflected in the mirror, just as it’s impossible to look at what’s happening to coral without confronting our role in its demise.

“In My Lifetime,” spans decades from the 1950s to the 2020s, and presents a series of 13 glass coral clusters. Pelissier suggests movement by incorporating slightly mushed polyps into her arrangements to mimic the swaying of ocean currents. The early clusters are luscious explosions of colored glass. It’s not until the 1980s, when the first mass bleaching event occurred, that we begin to see white clusters. After 2000, there are no more entirely colored ones, just predominantly white with only a few bright-hued polyps. The last three have lost not just their color, but most of their mass, leaving behind skeletons.

A video features Pelissier producing one of these blooms. It’s magical watching the molten bubble of glass being pushed down onto the arrangement of upside-down polyps, and then the whole weighty thing lifted and plunged into the fiery glory hole (the name given to the furnace used for reheating the glass during its manufacture). You can feel the heat and sense the effort and determination involved in producing blown glass pieces of this scale and complexity.

Fire and heat have special relevance to those who work with blown glass. Pelissier herself has experienced the profoundly deleterious effects of exposure to hot temperatures, developing an allergic reaction to the heat she needs to produce her work. It got so bad, she almost abandoned glassblowing altogether, pausing her practice for a full six years. Fortunately, she has figured out a way to limit her exposure and also limit the amount of time her 2,000-degree furnace is on—a necessary piece of equipment that she acknowledges is not exactly green. She is helped in this effort by the fact that her current pieces are composed of numerous smaller elements that form each coral cluster, allowing her to organize her production in stages so as to use the furnace as efficiently as possible.

Like many of us during the pandemic, Pelissier turned to Netflix for some welcome diversion. Watching Chasing Coral introduced her to the plight of coral and inspired this body of work. It is a galvanizing documentary, well worth your time. The artist is donating a percentage of sales to coral reef rehabilitation and research.

Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library 2450 Old Ivy Rd. Permanent exhibitions include “Flowerdew Hundred: Unearthing Virginia’s History” and “Declaring Independence: Creating and Recreating America’s Document.”

Angelo Jewelry 220 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Diamonds & Rust,” mixed-media paintings by Patte Reider Ormsby. Through October 28. First Fridays opening.

Botanical Fare 421 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Familiar Scenes: Recent Landscapes in Oil” by Randy Baskerville. Through September 4. 

Chroma Projects Inside Vault Virginia, Third St. SE. “Throwing Shadows,” oil paintings by Ashe Lauglin. Through September 29. First Fridays opening.

The Connaughton Gallery McIntire School of Commerce, Rouss & Robertson Halls. “Landscapes and Georgia O’Keefe Revisited,” alkyd oil paints on canvas, MDF panels, and textile/multimedia works by Eric T. Allen and the Fiber and Stitch Art Collective. Through December 8.

Crozet Artisan Depot 5791 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. “Simply Stated Elegance,” Cindy Liebel’s jewelry, inspired by contemporary architecture and abstract line art, and “Views of Serenity,” contemporary impressionist paintings by Lee Nixon. Through September. Meet the artists September 16 at 1pm.

C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “The Art of Humor,” handmade figurines by polymer clay artist, comic, and sculptor Derek Brown. Through September. First Fridays opening.

The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd., UVA Grounds. Exhibitions include “Look Three Ways: Maya Painted Pottery,” “Processing Abstraction,” and “N’Dakinna Landscapes Acknowledged.”

The Greencroft Club 575 Rodes Dr. “Flowers and Barns,” watercolors and oils by Linda Abbey. Through September 30. 

Jefferson School African American Heritage Center 233 Fourth St. NW. The “Sally Hemings University Connecting Threads” exhibition encapsulates the semester-long work of students of UVA’s Sally Hemings’ University. Through September 9.

Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of UVA 400 Worrell Dr. “Three Women from Wirrimanu,” paintings by Black Indigenous women artists Eubena Nampitjin, Muntja Nungurrayi, and Lucy Yukenbarri Napanangka. Through December 3.

Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Canopy,” works by Susan McAlister. Through October 29. Opens September 15.

McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In the Smith Gallery, pine resin sculptures by Frank Shepard. In the first floor galleries, “Textures: Hard and Soft” by Jill Kerttula and “Whimsy” by Michael Firkaly and Karen Rexrode. In the second floor gallery, a member group show of photography. In the Associates Gallery, “Animals.”

New City Arts 114 Third St. NE. “Color is Light,” two- and three-dimensional abstract pieces by Edie Read. Through September 28. First Fridays opening.

PVCC Gallery V. Earl Dickinson Building, 501 College Dr. In the North Gallery, “Beyond the Office Door.” In the South Gallery, the Annual Faculty exhibition.

Quirk Gallery 499 W. Main St. “House on Fire,” glass works by Kiara Pelissier and her team. Through September 29.

The Ruffin Gallery McIntire Department of Art at UVA, 179 Culbreth Rd. “Murmuration,” former art students, colleagues, and mentors of Elizabeth Schoyer combine energy, moving through the air, connecting creative visions, and converging. Through October 6.

The Scrappy Elephant 1745 Allied St., Ste C. “This is Creative Reuse IV,” mixed-media works using wood samples, paper, and beads, brought together through embroidery by Ellen Kanzinger. Through October 1. 

Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. In the Dové Gallery, “People in Empty Places,” new paintings by Lev Keatts. In the Main Gallery, “Teeny Tiny Trifecta 6,” a group exhibition and fundraiser. Through September 29. First Fridays opening.

Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital 500 Martha Jefferson Dr. On the second floor, oil paintings by Susan Lang in the Cancer Center hallway and photography by Michael Marino in the Outpatient Lab hallway. On the third floor Labor & Delivery hallway, oil paintings by Linda Staiger. Through October 9. 

Studio Ix 969 Second St. SE. “Sentimental Sediments: Ochre, Madder, Indigo,” new works by Laura Josephine Snyder, Allyson Mellberg Taylor, and Jeremy Seth Taylor, including a wall painting and a group of works exploring homemade inks and paints. Through October 1.

Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello 931 Thomas Jefferson Pkwy. An exhibition that includes a rare engraving of the Declaration of Independence. Through December.

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charlottesville 717 Rugby Rd. “Face It, Your Fascinating?” showcases portraits by Alan Kindler. Through September.

Visible Records 1740 Broadway St. “Heirloom,” collages by Caro Campos and paintings and sculpture work by Dorothy Li. First Fridays opening.

Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library 2450 Old Ivy Rd. Permanent exhibitions include “Flowerdew Hundred: Unearthing Virginia’s History” and “Declaring Independence: Creating and Recreating America’s Document.”

Botanical Fare 421 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Familiar Scenes: Recent Landscapes in Oil” by Randy Baskerville. Through September 4. 

Chroma Projects Inside Vault Virginia, Third St. SE. An installation of nature studies paintings by Richmond artist Emma Knight. Through August 25. First Fridays opening.

Create Gallery InBio, 700 Harris St. “One Man’s World,” oils on canvas and mixed-media by John S. Lynch. Through August.

Crozet Artisan Depot 5791 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. “Capturing Nature’s Beauty in Natural Gemstones,” jewelry by Rachel Dunn, and “Chromatic Conversations,” paintings by Ellyn Wenzler. Through August. Meet the artists August 12 from 1–3pm.

C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “The Textures of Time,” handmade stoneware by clay artist Laura Vik. Through August. First Fridays opening.

The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd., UVA Grounds. Exhibitions include “Look Three Ways: Maya Painted Pottery,” “Processing Abstraction,” and “N’Dakinna Landscapes Acknowledged.”

The Garage 100 E. Jefferson St. “historical fiction,” a collection of paintings by Sarah Miller. Friday, August 4, 5–7pm.

The Greencroft Club 575 Rodes Dr. “Flowers and Barns,” watercolors and oils by Linda Abbey.

Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of UVA 400 Worrell Dr. “Performing Country,” an exhibition highlighting never-before-seen works, and other permanent exhibitions. 

Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Organic Matter,” new works by Monica Angle, Heather Beardsley, Michelle Gagliano, and Kris Iden. Through August 27. 

Live Arts 123 E. Water St. “Colors of the World,” watercolor paintings by Karen Knierim. Through August.

McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In the Smith Gallery, “Flotsam, Discarded Materials Transformed,” an immersive installation of oceanic artwork by L. Michelle Geiger. In the hallway galleries, the summer members show. Through August 13.

New City Arts 114 Third St. NE. “Shade is a place: relief is my form, A Clearing with MaKshya Tolbert.” Exhibition includes poetry, pottery, and interactive Shade Walks along the Downtown Mall. Through August 24. First Fridays opening.

PVCC Gallery V. Earl Dickinson Building, 501 College Dr. In the North and South galleries, the 2023 Student Exhibition. Through September 4.

Quirk Gallery 499 W. Main St. “House on Fire,” glass works by Kiara Pelissier and her team. Through September 29.

Random Row Brewing Co. 608 Preston Ave. #A. “Near and Far: Scenes from Virginia and Tennessee,” oil paintings by Randy Baskerville. Through August 30.

Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital Second floor lab and cancer hallway. Animal portraits by Susan Edginton, florals by Jane Skafte, and photography by Jim Greene. Through August 7.

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charlottesville 717 Rugby Rd. “Conversing with the Universe,” works by Linda Nacamulli. Through August.

Visible Records 1740 Broadway St. “Entre Nos,” a group exhibition featuring works by artists in the undoc+ spectrum, curated by Erika Hirugami. Through August 19. 

A pair of shows on view at The Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia shine a spotlight on arts, culture, and the very existence of two groups of Indigenous people in North and Central America. “N’Dakinna Landscapes Acknowledged” and “Look Three Ways: Maya Painted Pottery,” curated by Adriana Greci Green, The Fralin’s curator of Indigenous Arts of the Americas and Dorie Reents-Budet, research associate at the National Museum of Natural History, center on work drawn from the museum’s collection.  

“N’Dakinna Landscapes Acknowledged” takes an innovative approach to presenting landscapes by members of the White Mountain School of painting, which flourished in New Hampshire during the 19th century. Similar to, though lesser known, than the Hudson River School, it shared some prominent Hudson River artists. Featured in this show are works by White Mountain painters Benjamin Champney, Samuel Lancaster Gerry, Samuel W. Griggs, and Sylvester Phelps Hodgdon.

As the robust American landscape painting tradition reveals, the land—its beauty and vastness—was a source of enormous inspiration and pride for newly arrived settlers. America’s great expanses represented a present-day Garden of Eden that was theirs to inhabit and tame into cultivation. This reverence was far-reaching, extending even to those who might never actually see these places in person. Champney’s paintings, for example, were often reproduced as chromolithographs that were widely distributed. 

This perspective ignores the fact that the land had been inhabited for millennia by a whole host of Indigenous peoples who had very different ideas about the land and its stewardship. N’Dakinna (homeland) is the Abenaki’s (People of the Dawn Land) name for this area, which they have occupied for 13,000 years. The Fralin show asks us, when looking at these beautiful paintings, to consider the Abanaki and their relationship to the land. 

As we navigate the choppy waters toward a more accurate understanding, the trick is to hold two different realities in one’s mind, acknowledging the experience of loss—of people, land, and culture, known as territory acknowledgment—and yet appreciate these paintings for what they are: beautiful landscapes that provide an incredibly valuable snapshot of what pre-industrial America looked liked.

Champney’s “Moat Mountains from Intervale” depicts a broad vista of cultivated valley before a backdrop of the dramatic geological formations known as the Ledges, with mountains beyond. The picture is surprisingly small given the grandiosity of the scene, but there’s an appealing intimacy to its size. The other works, oil on paper studies, provide charming pastoral vignettes, with Gerry’s view of a twisted tree against a blazing evening sky possessing a moodiness reminiscent of the almost contemporaneous German Romantic painters.

In addition to the paintings, two maps included in the exhibition speak to the Indigenous people’s relationship with the land. One, a topographical map Greci Green produced in collaboration with Chris Gist of UVA’s Scholars Lab, features the Abenaki and neighboring nations, the Haudenosaunee and Wabanaki, spelled out in a striking orange font across the map. The bold, flat writing effectively subverts the map’s imposed borders, proclaiming whose land it really was. 

“My own work is very much focused on Indigenous Native sovereignty and treaties,” says Greci Green. “When I think about art and landscape, I see it through those lenses.”

The other map, made in 1852 by cartographer Franklin Leavitt, features superimposed reproductions of the paintings placed where they were made, as well as a vintage postcard and a stereographic photograph. These latter two, which feature Abanaki posing for the camera, are souvenirs of the tourist industry that emerged around them. “These pictures of Abenaki basket makers at tourist spots highlight how these artists remain there in this landscape and are engaged with the local touristic economy,’’ says Greci Green. 

“Look Three Ways: Maya Painted Pottery” explores the rich tradition that flourished on the Yucatan Peninsula during the first millennium. Included in the show are works from The Fralin’s impressive collection of this art form, dating from 250–900 CE. Over the years, certain of these pieces have been displayed in the museum’s study center for the benefit of students, but the collection has never been displayed in this fashion before.

The vessels vary from everyday uses to ceremonial objects important to feasts that could be celebratory in nature, or important political events between different groups. They share a similar palette of red, black, soft terracotta, and cream, and the shapes of the vessels are simple: rounded bowls of different sizes, their fubsy form derived from gourds, some footed, and tall cylindrical drinking vessels. 

The title of the show alludes to the three ways the works are analyzed by scholars: interpreting the Maya hieroglyphic writing that decorates the vessels, the style of the pot—it’s size and shape—and finally, instrumental neutron activation analysis which can identify the place where the pot was made.

There is a poignancy to what is on view at The Fralin, an unmistakable sense of loss and displacement, of precious relics of obliterated human experience. But there is also a vibrancy in the artistry, a chance to sense what was so widely destroyed, and appreciate those who came before.

Likening their artistic collaboration to dancing the tango—following, giving, and then stepping back, Michelle Gagliano and Beatrix Ost decided to call their venture “Symbiotic Tango.” Chroma Projects is currently showing a selection of Gagliano/Ost works that give us a taste of what the collaboration looks like. A more extensive “Symbiotic Tango” show will be presented by the William King Museum of Art in Abingdon in December.

At Chroma Projects, the work is hung inside its bank vault. This intimate shrine-like setting is the perfect backdrop for pieces limned, framed, and splashed with gold. This precious metal’s glint enlivens an artwork visually, but gold also connotes high value as it pertains to the object and its message. For Gagliano and Ost, this high esteem also extends to the collaboration itself, which has enriched them both in untold ways.

“Before this, I was never drawn to abstraction,” says Ost. “But, now I’m in it. I’m in Michelle’s abstract world.” For Gagliano, working with Ost’s narrative has been expansive. “I never studied surrealism,” she says. “But getting to know Beatrix’s life, and seeing how it extends on to the canvas has been an incredibly enriching experience.”

How did the Gagliano/Ost collaboration come about? Like just about everyone else during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the two artists were struggling with isolation. So in November 2020, they hatched a plan to begin working collaboratively, transforming the ensuing months into a time of flourishing artistic output and creative growth.

One wouldn’t necessarily have thought to put the two artists together. Gagliano produces shimmering atmospheric, abstract compositions, while Ost’s ornate narratives boast a complex surrealist iconography that she uses to explore the human condition. But, this stylistic divergence works to their advantage as each brings her unique perspective to the project. “It’s like a collision of contemporary surrealism and abstracted nature,” says Gagliano.

The women do share many significant similarities. Both derive real sustenance from their practices, which have provided them not only a living, but an identity and psychic fulfillment. They are also each the mother of three sons. But, perhaps most important for their practice, Ost and Gagliano both grew up on large farms: Gagliano on a dairy farm in Upstate New York, and Ost on a farm in Bavaria that specialized in cabbages used in sauerkraut. This birthright has engendered in both artists a deep reverence for nature in its many forms—its bounty, its fury, and its fragility.

Gagliano and Ost work sequentially, completing paintings that they then exchange for the other to add to. To let go of something you’ve labored over to completion, giving it to someone else to work on as they wish, would give most of us pause, and in the beginning, it was challenging for the two. The artists were leery of stepping into the other’s painting for fear of mucking up the vision. It got easier as time passed and they became more in tune to each other and appreciative of the process.

The “Dissected Presence” series of paintings was begun by Ost. The works feature densely packed forms and images from her rich visual lexicon, creating a sumptuous allover effect. In two paintings from the series, an ancient-looking plaster idol reminiscent of the stylized Cycladic schematic figures is affixed to each panel. Their significance isn’t directly spelled out, but they seem to allude to a feminine goddess along the lines of Gaia. All of the works in this series are shot through with diagonal shafts of gold added by Gagliano. These metallic embellishments add a dynamic thrust of movement. They also disrupt the illusion of three-dimensional space, without obscuring the original composition.

Begun by Gagliano and finished by Ost, the series with the same name as the show, “Symbiotic Tango,” has nine paintings. Here, the focus shifts to the surfaces—Gagliano’s forte. She says she was inspired by the James River, with the churn and splash of paint intended to evoke water flowing over rocks. The explosions of paint resemble swirling clouds of vapor and the work can be taken to represent an emergence of some kind. The paintings boast hidden narrative tidbits—faces, birds, strange toothy creatures, a disembodied hand—that one must really look for in order to see. These partial glimpses of recognizable things amid the chaos of swirling medium suggest an excavated wall where only fragmentary sections remain, with the rest degraded or covered with dust or mud. Ost revels in these instances where the abstract meets the surreal. “That’s how the mind works,” she says. “It understands both the abstract and the surreal. It’s the eyes that want order.”

Working as an artist can be a very solitary pursuit. Many spend hours alone in the studio trying to figure things out. With another artist in the mix, it’s not only companionable, but there’s another person invested in the process to act as a sounding board. This is helpful in completing a piece by reinforcing the decisions and choices involved in its creation. It’s also easier to appreciate the artistic output and derive pleasure from its creation because you have someone else experiencing the same reaction and reinforcing one’s own. “I get so much from her and she gets so much from me,” says Ost. It’s a joint endeavor of listening, trust, and support.

Commonplace books, private scrapbooks, and zines are presented alongside traditionally published works at “Women Making Books,” an exhibition currently on display at the UVA’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library. The show forces viewers to let go of their preconceived notions of what a book is, so they consider the idea of authorship and explore the ways in which women have been involved in North American and English bookmaking from the mid-18th to 21st centuries. 

“The [exhibition] is thinking about women writing books, but writing in scare quotes,” says curator Annyston Pennington. “What does it mean to be a writer? What does writing look like? And what are the different ways that women have actually participated in and also intervened in print culture?”

Read between the lines of the exhibition’s 23 pieces, and you might begin to uncover the answers. 

The exhibition, arranged chronologically, opens with a familiar frontispiece illustration of Phillis Wheatley, found at the beginning of her 1773 work, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Though the publication of the book made Wheatley the first published African American author of poetry, her control over the design of the book itself was limited. Wheatley was enslaved by a Boston family, and her enslaver’s words forward her own. What would it have looked like if Wheatley had been able to call all the shots regarding the design of her book?

Questions of agency and intent arise at all the installations, which include works by other well-known authors like Virginia Woolf and Louisa May Alcott, as well as pieces from unknown women who likely would not have even considered themselves writers. 

One such piece is a commonplace book from 1782, belonging to an unidentified woman who filled the blank pages with quotations, translated Latin, and bits of writing from contemporary authors, much like the way we use modern-day Tumblr blogs or Pinterest boards.

Another installation includes a poetry book, in which a grieving mother found solace following the death of her son. Her annotations in the margins of the page could be considered defacement, but by including her in “Women Making Books” she is presented as an author. Whether she meant to or not, her words have altered our perception and reading of the book, making it impossible to detangle the two writings found within.  

“Women Making Books” concludes with “She Feels Your Absence Deeply: A Family History Woodblock” by artist and UVA alum Golnar Adili. Text is written on multiple wooden blocks, which can be arranged to show different images. It turns the traditional book model on its head, and refashions it into something new. 

Together, the works offer an intimate look inside the minds of various talented women and what they deemed important enough to write down, in a collection that serves to memorialize a feminine bond of creativity when creating, deconstructing, and reimagining books. 

Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library 2450 Old Ivy Rd. “Women Making Books” explores women’s contributions to English and North American bookmaking from the mid-18th to the 21st centuries, and other permanent exhibitions.

Botanical Fare 421 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Familiar Scenes: Recent Landscapes in Oil” by Randy Baskerville. Opens June 26. Through September 4. 

The Bridge PAI 306 E. Main St. Open studios with member artists of The Underground, and a mural created by high school students of Blue Ridge Juvenile Detention Center. Through June.

The Center at Belvedere 540 Belvedere Blvd. “All About Flowers,” a group exhibition of floral photography by the Charlottesville Camera Club. Through June.

Chroma Projects Inside Vault Virginia, Third St. SE. “Symbiotic Tango,” collaborative works by Beatrix Ost and Michelle Gagliano. Through June. First Fridays opening.

The Connaughton Gallery Rouss & Robertson Halls, UVA Grounds. “Healing Nature,” acrylic on canvas and oil on canvas Henry Wingate and Rick Morrow. Through June 15. 

Create Gallery InBio, 700 Harris St., Ste. 102. “BozArts for Literacy” features work from Betty Brubach, Julia Kindred, Brita Lineberger, Katharine Eisaman Maus, Ellen Moore Osborne, Shirley Paul, and Juliette Swenson to benefit Literacy Volunteers. Through June.

Crozet Artisan Depot 5791 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. “Quiet Places,” paintings by Debra Sheffer, and “Lucid Trees,” wooden objects by Jason Goldman. Through June. Meet the artists June 17 at 1pm.

C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Exploring Virginia and Beyond,” designs from illustrator Barbara Shenefield. Through June. First Fridays opening.

The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd., UVA Grounds. Exhibitions include “Look Three Ways: Maya Painted Pottery,” “Processing Abstraction,” and “N’dakinna Landscapes Acknowledged.”

JMRL Central 201 E. Market St. Digital collage artwork by Reta Crenshaw.

Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of UVA 400 Worrell Dr. “Performing Country,” an exhibition highlighting never-before-seen works, and other permanent exhibitions. 

Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Axis Mundi,” new work by New York-based artists Dorothy Robinson, Kurt Steger, and Meg Hitchcock. Through June 15. 

Live Arts 123 E. Water St. Watercolor paintings by Karen Knierim. Opens June 10.

McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In the Smith Gallery, “Flotsam, Discarded Materials Transformed,” an immersive installation of oceanic artwork by L. Michelle Geiger. In the first floor hallway galleries, “Cracked,” an exhibition representing the cumulative works created by the 2022-23 Incubator Studio Artists. In the second floor hallway gallery, “Portraits: Ourselves, Themselves,” a McGuffey members group exhibition featuring portraits. In the Associate Gallery, “Travel,” works by associate artists. Through July 2. First Fridays opening.

New City Arts 114 Third St. NE. “loss.nothing.memorial.” is an immersive sound and video installation by Ashon Crawley, honoring the lives of musicians, singers, and choir directors from the Black Church tradition who died of AIDS complications between 1980-2005. Through June 29. First Fridays opening. 

Phaeton Gallery 114 Old Preston Ave. “New Works” by Jackie Moore Watson. Through June 29. 

PVCC Gallery V. Earl Dickinson Building, 501 College Dr. In the North and South galleries, the 2023 Student Exhibition. Through September 4.

Quirk Gallery 499 W. Main St. “Trial & Error,” mixed-media works by Frank Phillips. “Ephemeral Spring,” a group show curated by Jessica Breed, featuring area artists. “House on Fire,” glass works by Kiara Pelissier and her team. Dates vary. 

The Ruffin Gallery 179 Culbreth Rd., UVA Grounds. “Playing with Syn-tax,” works by this year’s UVA studio art graduates and Aunspaugh fellows. In the third floor stairwell gallery, “In Memoriam: Art by and for D’Sean Perry.” Through June 23.

The Scrappy Elephant 1745 Allied St., Ste. C. Mixed-media works by Alissa Ujie Diamond. Through July 5. First Fridays opening. 

Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. In the main gallery, “Ditto” showcases collaborative works by Tobiah Mundt and Sarah Boyts Yoder. In the Dové gallery, “Echoes in the Deep Blue,” a solo exhibition of new work by Sahara Clemons. Through July 21. First Fridays opening.

Studio Ix 969 Second St. SE. “Beyond Boundaries” showcases works created by artists with developmental disabilities who belong to The Arc Studio collective. Through June 25. First Fridays opening.

Top Knot Studio 103 Fifth St. SE. “Take A Closer Look: intimates of nature” by Claire Smithers Mellinger. First Fridays opening.

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charlottesville 717 Rugby Rd. Showcasing the works of Circe Strauss using polarization diffraction in “Through a Glass Darkly,” and Ellen Osborne using mixed-media collage in “Transparency.” Through June.

Visible Records 1740 Broadway St. “Blue Veins,” murals and small square drawings from artist in residence Nadd Harvin, and “ENTRE NOS: Aesthetics of Undocumentedness,” a group show curated by Erika Hirugami featuring emerging artists within the undoc+ spectrum. Through June 3 and opens June 9, respectively. 

Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library 2450 Old Ivy Rd. “Women Making Books” explores women’s contributions to English and North American bookmaking from the mid-18th to the 21st centuries, “Visions of Progress,” and other permanent exhibitions.

Cavallo Gallery & Custom Framing 117 S. Main St., Gordonsville. Original works on paper and canvas by central Virginia artist Megan Davies. Through May.

Chroma Projects Inside Vault Virginia, Third St. SE. “You Have to Break Your Heart Until It Opens,” works by sculptor Sophie Gibson and painter and collage artist Amie Oliver. Through May 26. First Fridays opening.

The Connaughton Gallery Rouss & Robertson Halls, UVA Grounds. “Healing Nature,” acrylic on canvas and oil on canvas by Henry Wingate and Rick Morrow. Through June 15. 

Create Gallery InBio, 700 Harris St., Ste. 102. “BozArts for Literacy” features work from Betty Brubach, Julia Kindred, Brita Lineberger, Katharine Eisaman Maus, Ellen Moore Osborne, and Shirley to benefit Literacy Volunteers. Through June.

Crozet Artisan Depot 5791 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. “Full Bloom,” pottery by Stuart Howe and “Meanderings, Exploration in Acrylics and Pastels,” paintings by Mae Stoll. Through May. Meet the artists May 13 at 1pm.

C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Going With The Flow,” jeweler Natalie Darling’s new collection. Through May. First Fridays demonstration at 5pm.

The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd., UVA Grounds. New exhibitions include “Look Three Ways: Maya Painted Pottery,” “Processing Abstraction,” “N’dakinna Landscapes Acknowledged,” and “Radioactive Inactives: Patrick Nagatani & Andrée Tracey.”

Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Axis Mundi,” new work by New York-based artists Dorothy Robinson, Kurt Steger, and Meg Hitchcock. Through June 15. Reception May 13, 4pm.

Loving Cup Vineyard & Winery 3340 Sutherland Rd., North Garden. “Vineyards and Springtime” showcases oils and acrylics by Julia Kindred and Matalie Deane, respectively. Through May 28. First Fridays opening. 

McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In the Smith Gallery, “Cadence,” mixed-media paintings by Margaret Embree. In the first floor hallway galleries, art from Innisfree Village. In the second floor hallway gallery, the All High Schools Art Show features work from Charlottesville area high school students. In the Associate Gallery, “Green,” works from associate artists. Through Ma 28.

New City Arts 114 Third St. NE. “Fever Creek,” an exhibition of prints by Jackson Taylor. Through May 25. First Fridays opening and artist talk.

Phaeton Gallery 114 Old Preston Ave. “Hope Olson: Art From the Garden,” a solo exhibition showcasing acrylic on canvas and mixed-media works. Through May 20. Opens April 14. 

PVCC Gallery V. Earl Dickinson Building, 501 College Dr. In the North and South galleries, the 2023 Student Exhibition. On May 5, the PVCC Pottery Club’s Bowls and Bunuelos Fundraiser. Choose a handmade bowl and get a sweet Mexican fritter.

Quirk Gallery 499 W. Main St. “Trial & Error,” mixed-media works by Frank Phillips. Through June 18. 

Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. In the Dové gallery, “House Jungle,” paintings by Brittany Fan. In the main gallery, “Mirabilia naturae (Wonders of Nature),” works by Lara Call Gastinger, Giselle Gautreau, Elizabeth Perdue. Through May 19. 

Studio Ix 969 Second St. SE. “GARDENS + VISTAS,” two bodies of recent work by Anna Hillard Bryant. Through May 28. First Fridays opening.

Vault Virginia 300 E. Main St. “Tom Chambers and Fax Ayres: Everything is Extraordinary,” photographs using theater and light to describe the fantastical. Through May 16. First Fridays opening.

The moment you enter Second Street Gallery, you appreciate the variety of techniques featured in “Mirabilia naturae (Wonders of Nature)”—the precise, elegant line of Lara Call Gastinger’s works of paper; the poetic, emotive quality of Giselle Gautreau’s paintings; and the velvety tones and photographic verisimilitude of Elizabeth Perdue’s palladium prints. Each medium and style has its own formal and evocative allure, while also being ideally suited to capture and convey nature, a subject with which these artists are deeply engaged.

The differing approaches work very well in concert throughout the show, and specifically in the grid arrangement of 30 6″x 6″ squares that form a joint, site-specific piece. “We wanted a way to represent a cohesiveness in the show and came up with this idea of one gridded part of the wall that would embody all three of our styles together,” says Gastinger. “We love it. It shows everything from the detailed work of mine to the dreamy photographs of Elizabeth, and then the moody landscapes of Giselle.”

The individual works that make up Gastinger’s “Seeing Plants: A Year in Virginia (January-December),” feature florae as they appear during a given month. Her graphically symmetric arrangement of specimens is derived from the illustrated botanical plates of German scientist Ernst Haeckel. Gastinger uses the dry brush watercolor technique (a small amount of paint—without water—is used with a brush) to produce the extraordinary precision. Just look at her wispy paradise flower in “Seeing Plants,” or the thin hair-like filaments on the fiddlehead fern stems in “Emerging Ferns.” In this and the aforementioned series, Gastinger limits her palette to sepia, which produces varying tones of gray. In other works, she introduces color. Throughout, you marvel at Gastinger’s ability to artfully join scientific veracity with a finely tuned sensitivity to the myriad aesthetic qualities of her subjects.

In her contemplative encaustic paintings, Gautreau uses tonal values to create mood. She downplays detail in these softly edged, atmospheric works, keeping her palette muted and focusing on dusk or twilight when shadows grow and light is diffused. The multiple layers of oil and encaustic that Gautreau employs expand the visual depth while augmenting qualities of luminosity.

In “Virginia Nocturne with Fireflies,” the insects of the title appear as pinpricks of brilliant bluish light against a backdrop of inky conifers. Hazy silvery light from the moon illuminates the sky and shines on a small glade in the foreground, creating the effect of a spotlit stage. Here, a patch of springy clumps of grass with worn areas of dirt is conjured out of lush brushstrokes in vivid green and yellow. A simple composition, the piece evokes childhood memories of the ineffable magic of lightening bugs and moonlight in a summer garden.

“With landscapes, there’s a point where the viewer might connect with them and feel some familiarity with something,” says Gautreau. “But if I get too specific, unless it’s something they have a personal connection to, they lose interest. So, I walk that line between making work that’s rooted in something specific, while also leaving it open to interpretation.” 

Palladium printing is an old process, prized for its beautiful effects and archival resilience. Traditionally, large-format cameras are used because the technique requires the negative to be the same size as the image. Perdue uses a Calumet camera with either 8″ x 10″ or 4″ x 5″ negatives. When she’s ready to print, after first processing her film, Perdue paints an emulsion containing palladium salts and a light sensitizer onto watercolor paper. After it dries, she lays the negative on top to make a contact print. She then places this in a light box for exposure, with the addition of a developer. How long it stays in there depends on the desired effect, but it can range anywhere from a few minutes to an hour, or even more.

“I love the tones, the gradations and the grays, and also the texture of the paper. None of it is digital,” says Perdue. “It’s all very tactile—very hands-on. It’s old school. I love that about it.” While palladium printing may be complicated, it’s also simple in the sense that the artist can be involved and in control of the entire process.

Perdue gathers her subject matter on walks, looking for things that “shine in their simplicity.” She selects just one stem or branch to photograph at a time, producing a form of portraiture. “I love celebrating the ephemeral quality of a single bloom, or shoot, and capturing it in a medium that is believed to last for up to a thousand years,” she says.

There’s an unmistakable elegiac quality to “Mirabilia naturae.” We see it in the desiccated magnolia leaf, the fragile fireflies facing collapse, and the somber grandeur of a lone magnolia bloom. It’s easy to revel in each approach, and also in the wonders they present, and it’s very hard to leave the gallery without being more mindful, observant, and appreciative of the ever-fascinating natural world.

Lara Call Gastinger, Giselle Gautreau, and Elizabeth Perdue are featured in “Mirabilia naturae (Wonders of Nature)” at Second Street Gallery through May 19.