Tag: Fine Arts

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.

“Tom Chambers and Fax Ayres: Everything is Extraordinary,” currently on view at Chroma Projects at Vault Virginia, features two artists using distinctive approaches to alter and enhance photographs in order to capture a mood, an evocation of a place, objects, or some mystical imaginary region.

Fax Ayres enjoys playing with perception. This is evident in his transformation of ordinary objects into something special, and the playful shifting back and forth between reality and fiction that’s a recurring theme throughout his work. Photographing each piece incrementally, Ayres works on small sections, taking as many as 200 photographs to end up with the 100 good ones that comprise a finished image.

“I like the fact that they can appear to be paintings or photographs,” says Ayres. “I have a definite affinity for some of the Dutch painters who did those hyper photorealistic paintings.” 

To achieve the crystalline quality of his images, Ayres uses light painting. With the camera mounted on a tripod and tethered to a computer, Ayres holds a remote trigger in one hand and a small flashlight in the other. He opens the shutter and skims the light across the surface of the area he’s photographing, throwing the object into high relief. The shutter speed depends on a variety of factors, including the surface area size, how shiny or dull it is, and even how far away it is from the camera.

“I keep the shutter open with a manual count,” he says. “Then I close the shutter and look at the image to see if the highlights look right, if the texture of the surface is revealed in the way I want, etc.”

One can see the result of the process in the remarkable reflecting, haptic, and even emotional qualities Ayres is able to wrest from the ordinary, everyday objects he uses. To preserve the clarity of the work, Ayres has his images printed on smooth, matte aluminum.

At first, “The Usual Suspects” appears to be a sober and imposing work, but then we notice a plastic monkey and parakeet amidst the oil cans, padlocks, and weights. It’s a delightful touch that disrupts the unrelenting browns and grays of old metal by adding color, humor, and frivolity.

In “Portal,” Ayres takes this levity further, creating a faux landscape of fake trees and grass, a dog figurine, and a macabre novelty lamp, all set within a car gear part that’s resting on an old-school style level. These functional objects, made from steel and wood, shine under Ayres’ exacting eye—their humble ordinariness transformed into beauty by proximity to the garish artificial scene they’re paired with.

Ayres steps outside the studio with the striking “Birch Trees” and “Pool Gates.” In these works, intense lighting and hyperrealism work together to produce a curious artificiality that adds drama and suspense.

In his allegorical photomontages, Tom Chambers captures the innate beauty of young girls in a way that exalts them while preserving their innocence. In Chambers’ hands, this central theme yields powerful images.

According to Chambers, “the photographs present something that is possible but not probable,” a land where girls rule (or at least have agency) and feral beings are safe. He photographs his subjects in the studio, while placing them within landscapes that tend to be rugged, northern coastal settings—the perfect foil for the tender girlish pulchritude depicted. 

In some images, the girls are either holding or interacting with natural beings—a wolf, birds, fireflies, which are in peril because of demonizing, loss of habitat, or pollution. In these mysterious tableaux, one has the sense that the girl is in control; a junior Mother Nature tending to and protecting her charges. “In each of my images, I’m going for my own expression of a feeling through telling a story,” he says. “I hope the viewer also connects in some way emotionally with his own personal interpretation.”

Chambers clothes his models in garments that sync perfectly with the timbre of the work. Their frocks, muted in color and style, have a timeless elegance about them that’s unusual and piques our interest. One girl, in a plain white shift, sports an arm in a matching sling. It’s unexpected and provocative, engaging the viewer’s curiosity and dispelling any whiffs of cloying sentimentality such enchanting subjects might arouse. Another girl wears a black and white checked dress that echoes the speckled hens at her feet. Still another wears pale pink, the same shade as the teapot she holds.

There’s an unmistakably elegiac quality to the work. The fragility depicted, whether of nature or young girls, is under constant threat. In these brave doe-like visages—serene, fearless, immutable—we see beauty certainly, but we also see strength. And yet, this strength is tempered by our understanding of the girl’s unequivocal vulnerability. It is this last quality together with the subjects’ patent goodness that makes them the ideal incarnation for humanity in these beguiling examples of memento naturae.

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

Botanical Fare 421 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Paths and Roads,” oils by Julia Kindred. Through April 24.

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. “Pam Black: Architecture of the Field Redux,” paintings and drawings of horses in their natural environment. Through April 28. 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. “Pollen,” oils by Linda Staiger. Through April.

Crozet Artisan Depot 5791 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. Pressed flowers by botanical artist Karla Murphy, and “Gypsy Soul Jewels,” jewelry by Michelle Nevarr. Through April. Meet the artists April 8 at 1pm.

C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Gourd Art” showcases hand-carved, decorative gourds by Vyvyan Rundgren. Through April. First Fridays opening.

Dovetail Design & Cabinetry 1740 Broadway St., Ste. 3. Impressionistic landscapes and intuitive paintings by Janet Pearlman. Through mid-April. 

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.”

Jefferson School African American Heritage Center 233 Fourth St. NW. “Picture Me As I Am: Mirror and Memory in the Age of Black Resistance” showcases a selection of portraits taken of African Americans at the Holsinger Studio. Through April 29.

King Family Vineyards 6550 Roseland Farm, Crozet. Fashion Your Own Happily Ever After, a fashion show and silent auction benefiting Charlottesville’s Women’s Shelter, Shelter for Help in Emergency. April 23 at 2pm.

Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “The Denial of Death,” paintings by Russ Warren. Through April 30. Luncheon and artist talk April 16 at 12:30pm.

Live Arts Theater 123 E. Water St. “Secondary Worlds,” pen and ink drawings and collage on paper and wood by Steve Haske. Through April 30.

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, “Group 6,” works by a collective of painters and mixed-media artists from the Beverley Street Studio School. In the first floor hallway galleries, “Traveling the Nile,” oil paintings of landscape views from along the Nile River by Blake Hurt, and “Nature,” large format ceramic tile paintings by Scott Supraner. In the second floor hallway gallery, “Wasteland Revisited,” mixed-media works by David Borszich and “Collage,” a member’s exhibition. In the Associate Gallery, “Rhymes,” works from associate artists.

New City Arts 114 Third St. NE. “Essing, Fawning, Gawping, Hocking, Isling, Jostling, Keening, Legging, Moping, Nodding, Oolong, Putzing, Querling,” an interactive installation of soft sculpture by Conrad Cheung. Through April 22. First Fridays opening.

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. Opens April 14 with the Eighth Annual Chocolate Chow Down and an interactive coloring station.

Quirk Gallery 499 W. Main St. “Constant Anomalies,” hyper-realistic paintings by Suzanna Fields. Through April 16. Gallery talk April 8 at 2pm.

Random Row Brewery 608 Preston Ave. “Spring,” a joint show from Carolyn Ratcliffe and Terry M. Coffey featuring pastels, watercolors, and oils. Through April. Reception March 10.

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)” showcases paintings, photography, encaustic, works on paper, and mixed-media by Lara Call Gastinger, Giselle Gautreau, and Elizabeth Perdue. Through May 19. 

Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital 500 Martha Jefferson Dr. Works by members of the Piedmont Pastelists. Opens April 11.

St. John’s Episcopal Church 410 Harrison St., Scottsville. “Latin Connection,” features images taken by photographer Glenn Nash from his travels in Central America and the Caribbean. Through May 27. Open Saturdays from 10:30am to 1pm.

Studio Ix 969 Second St. SE. The Charlottesville Black Arts Collective presents “A Moment to Exhale,” a group photography exhibition that includes Kori Price, Benita Mayo, and Derrick J. Waller. Through April. Artist talk and happy hour April 20 at 5pm.

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charlottesville 717 Rugby Rd. “Developing,” works by Levonne Yountz. Through April.

University of Virginia Medical Center Main Hospital Lobby, 1300 Jefferson Park Ave. “Serenity,” photographs by Emily Allred. Through May 2.

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.

Visible Records 1740 Broadway St. New works. First Fridays opening.

Though Sarah Lawson lives far from the coast in Nelson County, they have been keeping tabs on the climate crisis for some time now, following it internationally in the news, and even mapping the movement of a particular iceberg in Antarctica. At home, Lawson (a contributor to C-VILLE) has been monitoring the changes occurring in the creek that runs through their property. The land belonged to Lawson’s grandparents, so they’ve known this stream all their life and remember how it was and how it’s changed. 

Lawson’s show at New City Arts, “Salience, the sea,” addresses two different themes associated with the climate crisis. Mortality salience, meaning the knowledge that we’re all going to die, and also, the sea, or oceans and bodies of water generally—the flashpoints where the effects of the climate crisis are most apparent.

Lawson acknowledges the intrinsic sadness of the subject matter. “There’s a lot of unprocessed death and grieving I think we’re feeling as a society in response to COVID,” Lawson says. “I’m currently studying social work at VCU. A lot of studies about mortality salience talk about how, ‘Yes, it’s horrible, we’re all going to die. How could  there possibly be a silver lining?’ The silver lining, from a clinical standpoint, is that if you acknowledge this existential fact and embrace it, you can use that to really make the most of the time you have.” 

The larger works in the show are intended as a devotional on grieving, for what has been lost and what is to come. The smaller works started as part of a daily collage practice Lawson undertook when they turned 38 last February as a way of confronting their own mortality and staying in the moment. They titled this body of work using a numerical system: The first number is the chronological order in which the piece was done, followed by days in the year, followed by Lawson’s age. Lawson typically did these at the end of the day, while processing what news they’d read, the work they’d done and other quotidian occurrences. Gathering together the accordion files where they kept clippings, sorted by color, pattern, and texture, they went through them to see what jumped out. Beginning with “a very loose gaze,” Lawson would sort through, creating a smaller stack of things they wanted to incorporate. “I allow my subconscious to move things around in a certain way, trying to be as light-handed as possible in determining what’s going to come,” Lawson says.

Collage appeals to Lawson because it’s finding meaning in something discarded. It’s also open access—anyone can collage. “Something as simple as scissors and a glue stick can really affect someone’s day, or how they view the world. I just love that. It’s a really simple, easy to access form of self-expression.”

In some works, Lawson highlights the imagery represented in various scraps of paper, with others they subvert what’s being depicted, pairing it with pieces of colored paper to produce more abstract studies (“23/365/38,” “20/365/38,” “108/365/38” (a self-portrait), “70/365/38”). With both approaches, the inspired arrangements are striking. 

Lawson will often use the same picture twice to create a mirror image. Sometimes, this is exact, as in “6/365/38,” where the heads of two fantastical beasts form a portal from which a hand extends. In other works, like “29/365/38” and “54/365/38,” they alter them slightly, retaining the original shapes and outline. 

When they incorporate the human form, Lawson does so with a big helping of witty surrealism. In “22/365/38,” a colossal Audubon-like bird is picking up, or dropping, cartoon figures from or into an Italian town. In “123/365/38,” a woman’s head and hand emerge from a fat tubular offshoot of a heart, framed by a spray of mushrooms. “59/365/38” presents two fastidiously turned-out 18th-century soldiers sitting primly astride a large airborne fish. The two disembodied eyes in “31/365/38” grab the viewer’s attention, as they seem adrift on a sea of matter that could be cellular, geologic, or elemental.

It’s hard to pick a favorite from Lawson’s visual bounty, but there’s something so captivating about “89/365/38”—the modern building placed in the midst of a woodland setting. Lawson cut out a circle in the center, creating a void in the midst of the sleek corporate exterior. It also has the effect of a giant mirrored disc reflecting the surrounding landscape, and creates the impression of space vacillating from foreground to background.

Considering one’s own death and the collapse of the natural world is pretty bleak stuff. But the richness of Lawson’s work, which does just that, suggests it doesn’t have to be. If we can be clear-eyed about the realities of our future, we can thrive even if that future is grim. “The overall macro level problems that we’re facing from an ecosystem standpoint are horrific, but if we ignore them it just makes it worse,” says Lawson. “Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of darkness, but I try to practice being more comfortable within that and using it as an impetus to imagine alternatives.”

For artist Janet Bruce, the forced isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic was an opportunity to turn inward, to seek solace in nature and delve into a deep exploration of color. Directing her attention to the color theories of Goethe and Eugène Chevreul, as well as modern and contemporary colorists, Bruce produced over 360 color studies. This extensive foray is recorded in both a binder thick with diagrams, notes, and photographs, and the astonishing 13- by 8.5-foot installation “Color Study: On a Southern Horizon,” which features 247 of Bruce’s color analyses in a grid arrangement. These provocative artifacts are on view at Les Yeux du Monde in Bruce’s luminous show, “Locus Amoenus.” Latin for a place of safety and comfort, the title references not just a physical place—in this case, Bruce’s studio and the natural landscape she inhabits—but also a state of mind.

Hard work and introspection is evident in Bruce’s thrilling “Tree,” in which she pulls out all the stops. Bruce uses pigment and brushwork to describe the effects of light and shadow and delineate the features of the landscape, like the shape and texture of the vegetation or the crooked progress of a stream, but also to impart a sense of energy. Lavender and white zig-zagging lines buzz across the surface with fervid exuberance. 

Bruce’s color choices and pairings are beautiful in themselves, but they also have a distinct veracity. This is notable in her treatment of sun versus sunlight. Low on the horizon, the sun has a golden cast, but when it hits the forest floor, Bruce adds green to yellow to achieve the peculiar, almost day-glo, effect of sun raking across moss.

“Tree” alternates between representation and abstraction. We perceive a woodland scene with foreground, middle ground, and background, while admiring the dazzling stew of pigment and gesture that roils across the surface and elevates an ordinary scene into an extraordinary painting.

The perfectly calibrated composition “All Four Seasons in One Day” draws on all of Bruce’s talent. Though a more abstract work, it shares with “Tree” a similar organization with a kind of Y shape taking the place of the central tree. Bruce balances the work chromatically with lavender passages in the upper left and lower right, and gray in the opposite quadrants. At the center, cinnamon and rosy purple converge to form the Y. A calligraphic swish of black meanders in and around its periphery, concluding in a squiggly flourish at the bottom. 

To say Bruce uses pale yellow and white to compose her sun does a disservice to the complex passages she comes up with. The eye causes these mélanges of hues to coalesce into an impression of a particular color, but make no mistake, the artist’s colors are the sum of many parts. To suggest wind-tossed branches fleetingly obscuring the sun, she adds flicks of paint—cream, pale green, and brown. Her rosy aura of rays staining the sky perfectly captures how the heavens look at sunset when it clears after rain. The pigment’s application throughout the work conveys the effects of weather and atmosphere—sheets of rain, blustery wind, raw temperature. Gray and lilac suggest a front pushing across the sky or the unrelenting gloom of heavy cloud cover. 

“High Sun Day” may be a small work, but it grabs your attention. The bold, yet lyrical brushwork and nuanced palette of yellow and a tantalizing green strikes the perfect chromatic and gestural chord. Within the tangle of yellow strokes, you can see the speed of application and get a sense of brush moving paint along the surface. The areas where the pigment is more thickly applied act like highlights, with the thinner areas appearing to dissolve into the background.

Bruce’s inspiration for her series “Four Seasons” comes from Nicolas Poussin and Cy Twombly—she embraces both the pastoral landscape tradition of Poussin and Twombly’s formal approach to materials and technique. Bruce has synthesized and distilled her seasons so that what we really get is sense memory impressions. Whether it’s winter’s frosted suspended animation, summer sun on greenery, a tawny scrawl suggestive of fall foliage, or the shimmering luminism of “Spring,” each painting summons up a distinct time of year through abbreviated means.

A handful of the artist’s “Materiali/Immateriali” prints hang in the show, but there are others available for viewing in the gallery’s flat files. These are well worth your time. Produced using color viscosity and silk aquatint (printmaking techniques), you can see the ravishing effects in the ink’s movement across the plate—drizzly in some places, vaporous in others—as well as the riveting interplay between the different hues. 

Like so many of us, Bruce had very different plans for 2020. According to gallery director Hagan Tampellini, Bruce had been accepted into the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts residency program in Auvillar, France, but due to the pandemic, the program was canceled. Undeterred, she moved on to plan B: finding her locus amoenus in her own backyard.

Baker Gallery Woodberry Forest School, 898 Woodberry Forest Rd., Woodberry Forest. “Studies in Nature” by Kelly Coffin. Through February.

Botanical Fare 421 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. Watercolor paintings by Juliette Swenson. Opens January 17.

Chroma Projects Inside Vault Virginia, Third St. SE. “A lifetime isn’t long enough for the beauty of this world” showcases the mixed-media nature studies of Jane Skafte. Through January 27. First Fridays opening, 5pm.

C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. The studio sale features art from members. Through January.

The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd., UVA Grounds. “Joseph Cornell: Enclosing Infinity” and other exhibitions.

Greencroft Club 575 Rodes Dr. “Landscapes and More,” acrylics by Matalie Deane and oils and pastels by Julia Kindred. Through March 31.

Le Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Locus Amoenus,” works by Janet Bruce. Opens January 14.

Mas Tapas 904 Monticello Rd. Doraine Glidden displays a variety of works, including glass mosaic windows and large sculptural pieces. Through January.

McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In the Smith Gallery, “Pairings…a collaborative happening” features pieces from the 2021-22 Incubator Artists and McGuffey members. In the hallway galleries, the new member show. In the Associates Gallery, “Words,” works from associate artist members. Through January 29. First Fridays reception at 5:30pm.

New City Arts 114 Third St. NE. “From Her to My Niece,” a solo exhibition of new paintings by JaVori Warren. Through January 27. First Fridays opening, 5pm.

Northside Library 705 West Rio Rd. In the Quiet Room, “Meditative Art Via Nature,” melted crayons and acrylic by Sara Gondwe.

Phaeton Gallery 114 Old Preston Ave. “Winter’s Edge,” new works by Cate West Zahl that pay homage to the simplification that takes place during the winter season. Through January 20. First Fridays reception.

PVCC Gallery V. Earl Dickinson Building, 501 College Dr. Two exhibitions from photographer, scientist, and conservationist Michael O. Snyder. “Black Joy Is,” local and regional African American female artists examine what Black joy is through a variety of mediums. Through January 14 and opens January 27, respectively. 

Random Row Brewery 608 Preston Ave. “Local Landscapes,” photography by Andy Stafford. Through February.

Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. In the Main Gallery, “Her Deeds,” mixed- media installations by Mariana Parisca. In the Dové Gallery, “Visions of Mary,” linocut prints, painting, and installation by Ramona Martinez. Through January 21. 

Studio Ix 969 Second St. SE. “ar.ti.fac.tu.al,” works from local artists Kim Boggs and Mike Fitts. Through January. 

Telegraph Art & Comics 211A W. Main St., Downtown Mall, and 398 Hillsdale Dr. Todd Webb’s “Picture Show” is on display at both locations. Through January 15. First Fridays reception at 5pm at the downtown location. 

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charlottesville 717 Rugby Rd. Works of the BozARTS Collective members Christine Rich, Brita Lineburger, and Joan Dreicer. Through February.

Visible Records 1740 Broadway St. “Direct Sow,” the second annual group show, juried by curator Erika Hirugami. Through February 4.

Untrained and subject to the dual, almost insurmountable, constraints of economics and Jim Crow, the artists on display in “Of Another Canon: African American Outsider Art” at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center possessed a creative fire. Despite cruelly stacked odds, Mozell S. Benson, Rudolph Bostic, Bessie Harvey, Anderson Johnson, Mary Proctor, Bernice Sims, Jimmy Lee Sudduth, Annie Mural Tolliver, Mose Ernest Tolliver (aka Mose T), and Ruby Williams persevered in their art, creating work that brims with raw authenticity, joy, and passion.

With the show’s title, the curators place the work, from the collection of Richard and Ellie Wilson, in its own alternate, yet equally valid canon to that of Western art history. They also raise questions about the term “outsider art.”

While it’s a generally accepted way to refer to art made by self-taught artists who operate outside the traditional art world, in this case, the work speaks not just to the individual artist’s experience, but to similar experiences shared by a large group of people. It was a 1982 exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery, “Black Folk Art in America, 1930–1980,” that played a significant role in elevating the art of self-taught African American artists and creating a market for their work. Nearly all the artists represented in this show are now featured in major museum collections. Mose T is widely known, and Williams, who sold her paintings off the back of a truck along with her produce, was the subject of an extensive New York Times obituary in August of this year. With this recognition, I wonder if the artists benefited in any substantial way from their artwork. It’s likely they did not, but it gives me hope that other, similar artists coming up behind them will.

Entering the gallery space, the eye is immediately snagged by Williams’ electric “Piano Playing Cow I Give Better Buttermilk.” I’m betting Picasso, who reputedly once said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child,” would envy this odd-footed orange bovine sporting black and white keys running along its back and a toothy, mask-like face. Nearly as riveting, “Ms Bonnie Bon Bonnie with Purse” is a simple composition made exceptional by her weird and wonderful hands.

Mose T, Sudduth, and Johnson share a similar approach. For the most part, they rely on vibrant color and bold shapes to render figures against flat expanses of pigment or just plain plywood—as in the case of “Self-Portrait with Willie Mae.” T’s sophisticated sense of color and composition is laid bare in this painting and in his “Portrait of a Woman with Baby.”  A similar sensibility is echoed in the work of Sudduth, who used a combination of house paint and mud from his yard to create his jaunty self-portrait, and his likeness of a girl sporting a stylish hat and holding a violin. Annie Mural Tolliver (T’s daughter) and Sims take this approach and expand it into spiritual and narrative directions. Tolliver’s stylized “Garden of Eden” employs a dramatic palette and striking arrangement of forms, while Sims’ “Edmund Pettus Bridge,” painted from memory (as was all her work) with childlike simplicity, is made more powerful knowing the artist was an eyewitness to the seminal event.

Harvey’s “Garden of Eden,” the only sculpture in the show, is made from a tree root. The label describes how root sculpting plays an important role in African American vernacular art. Here, Harvey daubs paint across the surface, and uses the longest root for her serpent. It seems to veer like a malevolent tube man toward the viewer. Harvey takes advantage of a knob in the wood to form the nose, adding stuffed animal eyes surrounded by painted lashes, a row of pearls for teeth, and a jaunty orange earring. This almost human face is creepy, thanks largely to the teeth, with a totemic quality that suggests a spiritual purpose.

Bostic’s “Egyptian Scene” and “Garden of Eden” take us even further into visionary territory. The first, a tondo painted on the cover of a flour container (Bostic worked at a baking company), is studded with Egyptian iconography that identifies the reclining figure as a dying pharaoh. Bostic mixes his colors to add volume and highlights, and to produce a range of hues that tend toward the richer jewel tones. Indeed, the works, with figures outlined in a Sharpie, resemble stained glass. The second painting, on a rectangular piece of cardboard, features an ornate composition, chockablock with the wonderfully rendered animal and human cast of the Judeo-Christian origin story. Bostic tops it off effectively by creating a trompe-l’oeil gilded frame with yellow squiggles on a black border.

Other artists also used materials that were at hand and free—odd bits of plywood, leftover house paint, a tree root, or worn-out clothes. Though employed out of necessity, these humble materials have a grittiness that add both visual and emotional weight to the work. In addition to information about the works, the accompanying labels also provide brief accounts of the artists’ lives. They were universally challenging, rife with enormous obstacles. And yet, from these terrible circumstances art was produced—a vital outlet for the artists and a record of their existence. It’s an extraordinary testament to the creative drive and to the resiliency of the human spirit.

The exhibition “Power Play: Reimagining Representation in Contemporary Photography” at UVA’s Fralin Museum of Art brings together the work of multiple female artists as they deconstruct and condemn classic presentations of feminine identities in popular culture. 

From the first moment that museum-goers enter the exhibition curated by Hannah Cattarin, Adriana Greci Green, and Laura Minton, they are assailed by a motley of bright colors coming from the photographs, and the introductory text at the center of the display. 

“For us, the works and the artists are what’s really at the forefront of the show,” says Minton. “….the concepts are also conversing with each other—because each artist is engaging with these concepts—but in a totally different way from each other. There’s overlap, but at the same time, they’re all doing something that is very unique, and that’s one of the really cool things about this show.”

In the work of British artist Sarah Maple, the artist centers herself in classic Disney princess costumes, presenting these iconic female figures in contemporary leadership roles—Snow White as a football coach, Sleeping Beauty as a surgeon, Ariel as a CEO. Through this series, she criticizes the relegation of women to the domestic sphere, and combats patriarchal definitions of femininity. 

The adjoining wall features innovative Atlanta-based artist Tokie Rome-Taylor. Her photographs spotlight young Black children dressed in rich fabrics, and sporting assortments of pearls and other accessories denoting extreme wealth. The photographs feel reminiscent of Renaissance paintings of wealthy European women from prominent families, while also incorporating elements of African diasporic material culture, as seen through her 2022 piece “Promising Sight.” Rome-Taylor thus combats the lack of African American representation in art history—she gives Black people, particularly Black women, a vision of a past that is not defined by subjugation. By reclaiming the past of Black femininity in this way, she also subverts the common reductive representations of Black women that appear in the media landscape. 

As a member of the Chemehuevi Indian tribe, Cara Romero works to deconstruct stereotypes of Native women in her photographs. Indeed, her pieces all feature a Native woman at the center, surrounded by an assortment of cultural items. Significant colorful patterns frame the photographs, further evoking the packaging in which children’s toys are sold. Her 2019 piece “Amber Morningstar” catches the onlooker’s attention with its vivid blue backdrop and red framing adorned with intriguing Native American symbols, the model at the center dressed in traditional clothing—a commentary on the commodification of Native femininity in popular culture. 

American artist Martine Gutierrez’s diverse work deconstructs classic representations of femininity as seen in magazines and dolls. In her 2014 piece “Line Up 4,” Gutierrez stands motionless among a group of mannequins—she is indistinguishable from them, a sharp criticism of femininity within the capitalist system. Gutierrez also subverts representations of femininity in contemporary media in her 2018 piece “Queer Rage, Imagine Life-Size, and I’m Tyra, p66-67 from Indigenous Woman.” In an excerpt from Indigenous Woman, her imaginary magazine, Gutierrez depicts the ever-shifting identities of a queer woman and her infinite potential as she reclines in her self-portrait in traditional Guatemalan dress, surrounded by vegetation, photoshopped animals, and dolls, among other things. 

Wendy Red Star is a Native artist from the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana. Her photograph series “Four Seasons” shows her over the course of different seasons. She is always in traditional attire and surrounded by nature, and is often looking directly at the camera with an air of defiance. These portraits evoke the life-sized dioramas commonly found in natural history museums; they usually depict extinct and near-extinct animals or insects. Though the natural elements that surround the artist are imitations, she is very real. Red Star thus asserts the continuing existence of Native women, and the value of their culture and heritage. Her final piece in the exhibition, 2016’s “Apsaalooke Feminist #4,” features the artist with her daughter. They are surrounded in Apsaalooke aesthetics and symbols, and adorned in traditional garb, with pensive looks on their faces. The piece draws attention to the importance of passing down Native culture and knowledge, particularly through matrilineage. In Red Star’s exhibition, Native femininity is invigorated both by its refusal to succumb to extinction, as well as its value in preserving Native culture through time. 

“What I love so much about all of these contemporary artists and their work is that there’s so much questioning happening,” says Cattarin.  “And we don’t want to come in with some idea of control or authority that tells you what you should think about.”

“One of the best things about collaborating with another artist is I learn a great deal about the other person’s sensibility to materials, aesthetics, and mark making,” says artist Diego Sanchez. His work is currently on view at the Quirk Gallery, together with fellow Richmonder Mary Scurlock.

In “Conversations,” each artist has eight paintings on display, which give the viewer enough information to understand and appreciate the artists’ individual approach and style, while providing a key, of sorts, to the intricate dance of give and take apparent in the 10 joint pieces. The artists worked in layers, on top of one another’s contribution, exchanging paintings back and forth three to four times, keeping a tally in pencil on the back of each work. 

Looking at the individual pieces, you might not put the two artists together. Sanchez favors bold color and geometric shapes, while Scurlock prefers a more streamlined palette and blurred edges. But spending time with their paintings, you begin to see that both artists employ a similarly diverse selection of media, and devote the same attention to developing their surfaces with layers of paint, wax, and paper.  

Sanchez’s paintings are hung in the front part of the gallery, where the Quirk’s soaring space can easily accommodate their exuberance. Scurlock’s are in the back, where the ceilings are lower in a quiet, more meditative area that suits these contemplative pieces.

One marvels at all that’s going on in terms of color, composition, and medium in a work like Sanchez’s “Composition #151.” The easy allure of turquoise and cobalt is tempered and elevated into something much more sophisticated by passages of dun and gray. The rectilinearity of the overlapping planes is subsumed in places by broad brushstrokes. Perfect orbs of blue dance across the surface, encountering more amorphous circular shapes. Partially obscured targets are “visual representations of ‘centering,’ of being mindful and present in our busy lives,” says Sanchez. They also summon Jasper Johns, an artist Sanchez admires, as does the mini crosshatch rectangle. Sanchez makes this his own by seasoning it with calligraphic scrawls of black and an odd tawny blob. Near the center, a lavender pastel rectangle dotted with burnt-orange dots more than holds its own against the more saturated passages.

“Composition #141” has a completely different effect. Here, it appears Sanchez has scraped off the background paint, leaving behind an expanse of fractured lines reminiscent of ceramic crazing. Whether it’s the light hue, or the network of lines that turn this flat expanse into a topographical map, the background appears quite distant with the strange shapes rendered in aqua, gold, and burnt sienna, floating above.

You might think it would be hard to compete with all the bright color and bold marks at the front of the room, but Scurlock’s paintings have a slow-burn heft and a presence that really gets under your skin. She relies heavily on the use of rubbings in her work. Instead of headstones, she goes after things like manhole covers, signs, and inscriptions, or even natural items. It all depends on her surroundings and what she wants to capture and convey about it, because, as she explains, “The intention of these paintings is to create a feeling—a space that mimics a place.” 

Back in the studio, she begins by adhering old paper—letters or clippings she’s saved—onto her panels. She then applies color, followed by the rubbings. These are done on delicate rice paper and are transparent, so when they are embedded in the surface they’re still legible. “The way I work, you put one thing down and something else changes, then you have to change that area so it works with the other area,” says Scurlock. “So, it’s hard to save things. But even though you can’t see them, they’re there. The idea is still there.” 

In “Ydra,” your eye is drawn to the graphically bold Greek lettering, especially the delta and zeta at center right that stand out against the vaporous clouds of pigment. There is the suggestion of houses on a hillside, evoking a Greek village. But it’s fragmentary, obscured here and there by blotches and daubs of shimmering paint. Similarly, incised lines and scratches form words or shapes, but they’re disjointed and incomplete. Just as memory does not present a perfect image, Scurlock intentionally renders this Saronic island in indistinct form.

With “Hatteras Village,” Scurlock introduces faded pink and dull green into the mix. Here, the composition is flatter, reflecting the topography of the subject. Again, we see bits and pieces, the eaves of a house possibly in the upper left, writing at the right center, and various circular shapes and squiggles scrawled across the surface.  

Within the collaborative pieces, you recognize the distinctive traits of each artist. There’s the color and geometric forms favored by Sanchez, but they’ve been softened, their tones and edges blurred by Scurlock’s hand. In doing so, she disturbs the integrity of those shapes and hues, shifting the timbre of the work to something more tenuous and uncertain.

Many artists would balk at the idea of letting go of a piece they’ve labored over and offering it unconditionally to another to augment as they wish. But the exercise can be remarkably rewarding, introducing new techniques and approaches, and producing exciting collaborative work.