Tag: Kristen Chiacchia

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Act locally: Area photographers’ exhibit focuses on systemic racism

This spring, just as people were grappling with the new normal of living in a pandemic, George Floyd’s homicide threw a Molotov cocktail of anger, frustration, and heartbreak onto an already stressful situation. After Rodney and Eric, Trayvon and Sandra, Breonna and Elijah, and countless other African American lives were taken by aggressive policing, Floyd’s killing became a galvanizing moment. People took to the streets, here and around the world, to say these lives—taken so casually and so cruelly—mattered.

In Charlottesville and Richmond, protesters turned their ire to Virginia’s Civil War monuments, those unmistakable symbols of white supremacy. The activists’ desire to remove these monuments is not about erasing history, but rectifying it. The statues were installed long after the war ended, deep in the era of Jim Crow, with the express purpose of intimidation. They are indeed heroic monuments. But it is a misplaced heroism, glorifying a history that didn’t exist, and a cause that was contemptible.

“Bearing Witness” at Second Street Gallery is an ambitious show that presents the Black Lives Matter protests from an artist’s perspective. Eze Amos, Ty Hilton, Marley Nichelle, Derrick J. Waller, Sandy Williams, IV, and Jack Doerner were given significant control over the substance and scope of the exhibition by Second Street’s Executive Director Kristen Chiacchia.

“I wanted to do a show that not only reflected on the protests against systemic racism happening in the community and around the country this summer,” says Chiacchia. “I wanted to look at it not as an historical exhibition of events that occurred, but to present it as an ongoing conversation.”

The photographs have a you-are-there immediacy. This is particularly evident in Eze Amos’ tight compositions, where you feel like you’re in that crowd. Amos deftly conveys the raw emotion of the protests by training his lens on the protesters’ faces. There’s a timelessness about his photographs; they could have been taken during the civil rights or anti-war protests of the 1960s, but for the masks. These evocations of the past drive home the fact that we are still dealing with the same issues and fighting the same battles years later. Amos has a great eye for composition, and revels in the black-and-white medium, manipulating contrasts of dark and light to add drama and visual richness.

There’s a special power to Derrick J. Waller’s photographs of the protests that happened just a few blocks from Second Street Gallery. And his “Skating the Revolution,” taken in front of Richmond’s Robert E. Lee monument during the euphoric time following the June 4 announcement of the statue’s removal, is a wonderfully animated image. The mask and the graffiti adorning the pedestal root it in these tumultuous times, adding a sense of unease to the carefree young man captured in midair. The skater seems in control, but we can’t miss the fact that, as a Black male, he’s also vulnerable. Waller’s photograph “Value the Work of Black Women” shows signs held by protesters in Charlottesville, and some of the signs, made by the Black Youth Action Committee, are also on display in the exhibit. Looking at the signs, we are reminded never to forget that these individuals went out into the streets during a deadly pandemic to stand up for social justice.

Ty Hilton doesn’t focus on the protests, but turns his gaze to inanimate objects transformed by the BLM activists. His aerial photograph of the J.E.B. Stuart plinth—sans statue—is startling. Looking down from above, it’s covered in a colorful jumble of graffiti. One sees not only how the protesters altered the monument with their additions, making it their own and creating a dynamic new artwork in the process, but also, in the empty rectangle at the top, what they accomplished through their protests. The power of absence is palpable.

Marley Nichelle’s images of the burning Confederate flag (“F*** Your Confederacy”) and Richmond’s Lee statue, taken from the rear with electric Breonna Taylor graffiti emblazoned at the monument’s base (“Justice for Breonna”), are potent and beautiful. In his image of a young Black man sitting on the sidewalk overcome by tear gas, or emotion, or both, he captures a quiet moment that is subtle and exceedingly moving. Gazing at the image, we are brought into the man’s reality, pondering his life and the physical and psychic pain he is experiencing.

The exhibition shows us instances of passion, beauty, and grace parsed out from the larger turmoil of the protests. Yes, they bear witness to this important period in history, but they also touch something more eternal that speaks to our humanity. It is this quality, together with the photographers’ mastery of their medium, that elevates the images into art.

All the photographs are printed on the same matte paper, which draws the viewer in and adds a cohesive flow to the exhibition. Hung directly on the wall using magnets, the images have particular immediacy. This quality is enhanced by the fact that no glass or frame separates them from the viewer.

Shifting gears, we come to Sandy Williams, IV and Jack Doerner, who work in a variety of media including sculpture, performance, and film, all of which are incorporated into the images on view in the exhibit. Williams and Doerner began by creating monument-shaped candles from 3D scans. The miniature wax replicas trivialize the statues and undermine their import. Then the candles were taken to the monuments, lit, and filmed as they burn down. Watching the colorful surrogates melt away is satisfying, subversive, and mordantly amusing. At the gallery, a selection of the candles is displayed along with images of them smoldering at the bases of their stone counterparts. The images are printed on aluminum, which creates a luscious slickness and gives the pieces a three-dimensional weight.

To introduce an interactive element and promote audience engagement, the gallery tapped artist and activist Destinee Wright to produce a version of her “Solidarity Cards Project,” which she first initiated in response to the 2016 election. Visitors are invited to write their reactions to the show on index cards that are pinned to the wall.

“I had to move some things around in the season to make these two shows possible,” says Chiacchia. “But we’re keeping them up through November 14. I think it’s very important that they’re up through the election to remind people that deep, historic, systemic racism still exists and the fight isn’t over.” [slideshow_deploy id=’148118′]

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Arts

In Living Black and White—with Shades of Gray: Colorless Expression Proves Lively in Second Street Gallery’s “She’s in Monochrome”

Laura Wooten's "Alentejo" series (this is "Alentejo 5") is now on view in the "She's in Monochrome" show at Second Street Gallery. Image courtesy Second Street Gallery

What do we really see when hues are subdued, diminished, or deleted outright?

Tough question. If you’re like me—colorblind—that’s kind of how you go through life. Art’s power when deprived of its full spectrum of possibility is difficult to gauge, since most of us who live the difference are simply born this way and have no basis of comparison. Yet in an interesting challenge, Second Street Gallery’s curator Kristen Chiacchia issued an invitation to local artists to create works that remove their usual reliance on color to express themselves. The resulting exhibition, “She’s in Monochrome,” now occupying SSG’s Dové Gallery until October 25, is surprisingly rich and varied, despite the black, white, and gray rules strictly governing the works on display.

Gray Dodson (whose very name along with fellow artists Sam Gray and Pam Black makes it seem as if she were practically born for this type of show) doesn’t stray from her aesthetic inclination to focus skyward, a go-to subject of hers along with landscapes and images of water. Devoid of her usual soft color interplay, “Big Rain” and “Place of Unknowing” are downright monolithic, with protuberances of cloudbursts taking on an Old Testament lashing out on the land in the former, while muddled sunlight struggles behind the wet wisps of the trees in the latter. We’re entering an unreal setting that’s gloomy but not without a dim glimmer of promise at its heart.

Krista Townsend’s views of the land in “Glacier” and “Vermont Woods” offer a more clear-cut sense of form and shadow in nature. By taking what comes across as a nearly two-dimensional approach while working within the confinement of greys, her work reveals a chilliness that is either a believable presentation of a steely-skied day or an icy night.

Providing an altogether different vision of landscapes, Laura Wooten’s five numbered “Alentejo” pieces expose verdant hillsides robbed of their greens and browns, eliciting colder images of south central Portugal. There’s something of Japanese sumi-e brush painting in her India ink and synthetic Yupo paper, as well; the stark pitch of the land loops and rolls, sliced by lightning bolt walking paths that catch the sun in cool forks, splaying the earth with serpentine pathways.

Nature nearly reaches its simulacrum breaking point in the grandmotherly floral patterns that have found a strange home in Lou Haney’s works on fabric and aluminum. The absence of bright pastels or cheerful shades on the petals of “Black Velvet If You Please” and “Quilt Gilt” are unsettling even to the colorblind eye. The Lycra, cotton, and beadwork feels more wrong than perhaps it should, but that very space is where the profound difference between expectation and this monochromatic reality plays most heavily upon both our senses and ability to interpret without the usual crutches or cues.

Considering the constraints of the show, perhaps the most vivid works come from Sam Gray, who presents mythical plant people occupying sharp locales that shimmer with fantastically cartoonish, stylized graphic qualities. “Cosmic Seed” reveals a being emerging from its plant pod and floating to celestial heights via its free-flying roots. In “New Stories,” the fungal woman ignores the jet goop dripping off her mushroom-capped head despite it getting everywhere—but with good reason, as she’s deep in ritual. Smoldering flame alights her blackened left hand while she draws with her right: a beginning, the start of a circle on a page, in black and white.

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Arts

Small gathering: A little means a lot at Second Street Gallery

Lou Haney’s “Funion” adds whimsy to the large collection of small works in Second Street Gallery’s “Teeny Tiny Trifecta,” on view through September 28. Image courtesy of the artist

Second Street Gallery begins its 45th year with “Teeny Tiny Trifecta,” a group exhibition in the Dové Gallery featuring 72 artists working in a wide range of styles, techniques, and media. Curated by Kristen Chiacchia, the gallery’s executive director and chief curator, the artwork was solicited through an open call, which garnered submissions from more than 100 artists.

“I didn’t really have a number of how many artists to show in mind ahead of time,” says Chiacchia. “There were so many fantastic submissions that I didn’t want to say no to any of these artists.”

The common denominator that links the work is its size; everything measures 10 inches or less. When coming up with this requirement, Chiacchia had several things in mind. Presenting a show of small work means one can show more, and it also allows for the price point to be kept low—a major consideration in introducing people to the idea of collecting art. So, everything in “Teeny Tiny Trifecta” is priced at an affordable $100. Small is in vogue these days, and with more people living in compact spaces, diminutive works have great appeal.

Small work also lends itself well to salon-style hanging, an approach that features large groups of work hung together on a wall. Though rarely used in gallery settings as it can overwhelm the individual work, it functions well with little pieces—gathering them together imparts a visual weight that the work doesn’t have by itself.

With salon style, one also appreciates the overall crazy-quilt effect—a pleasing visual sum made up of many parts. “I’ve always been really drawn to salon-style installation and the whole idea of a cabinet of curiosity,” says Chiacchia. “I have a lot of art [primarily Pop Surrealism] and I have a whole wall at home that is completely filled with it.”

“I was looking for a way to involve local and regional artists in the exhibition,” says Chiacchia. With 50 locals in the show—some familiar, some new to the scene—she succeeded. The balance is made up with artists from Richmond and as far away as New York City. Each artist was asked to contribute three pieces. In some cases, the three are all very similar and could almost be considered a series.

The show also represents an important resource for Chiacchia. “I am still fairly new to town and I don’t get out in the world as much as I would like,” she says. “It was great meeting everyone when they came to drop their work off. It was also nice because I’ve discovered artists I may be interested in working with in the future.”

The work ranges from edgy contemporary to more traditional still lifes and landscape, and so there’s something in the show to appeal to every taste. Allyson Mellberg Taylor’s nifty little portraits in vintage frames have a spare intensity that is arresting. The flatness and primitive quality of the drawing recalls early 19th-century watercolors of children—the restrained colors and patterns, Japanese woodblocks. But the disgruntled back-to-back twins and the scowling girl whose spots on her face mirror the egg between her hands add a strange discord that piques one’s curiosity.

With the focus on food and flowers, Lou Haney’s bold little statements include a sunny collage of daisies and two smaller tondo paintings of a flower and half a red onion. The latter, with its outside edge following the uneven circle of a cut onion, is particularly effective, a witty, trompe l’oeil work that grabs attention.

Courtney Coker’s photographs are atmospheric and evocative. It’s not entirely clear, but they seem connected in some way, like clues to a hidden story. The woman floating in the lake and the child in the forest are linked as figures in landscape, and the child in the forest is clearly the little girl of the portrait identifiable by her dress, hair, and age. They’re winsome, contemplative images that form such a potent trinity; one hopes they will be purchased as a set.

Based on Caravaggio, Michelle Gagliano’s figure studies possess a presence that belies their size. Her forceful, confident line and the use of black oil paint on canvas to render these sketches endows the two lower ones with a subtle power.

Resembling strange fungi, spores, or microscopic specimens, Jennifer Cox’s mixed media on panel works have a lushness of color and form. Her compositions occupy the space with intention and restraint.

Aaron Miller’s striking graphic sequences take inspiration from traditional comic strips. But the narratives of non sequiturs and enigmatic references push these works to a completely different place. Each piece is divided into a quartet of related images. Their black-and-white palette and classic, austere draughtsmanship offer a refreshing, ordered simplicity, and demonstrate the continued aesthetic power of the genre.

There are many practical considerations for mounting a show of small works, but let’s face it, there’s something just plain appealing about them. They often contain the visual interest and heft of much larger pieces, but it is presented in concentrated form within the confines of limited space. “Teeny Tiny Trifecta” illustrates this well with work that surprises, beguiles, and enchants.

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Arts

Matters of the art: Going behind the scenes of local galleries and museums

Henry Skerritt, curator of the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, takes a look at one of the museums pieces.
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Arts

First Fridays: June 1

Regina Pilawuk Wilson’s paintings, prints and one weaving are on view in “Ngerringkrrety: One Voice, Many Stories” at Second Street Gallery through July 27. Additionally, she and her son co-curated a current exhibition at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, “Ngunguni: Old Techniques Remain Strong,” and her work is part of “Marking the Infinite: Contemporary Women Artists from Aboriginal Australia,” at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., through September. Photo by Cassie de Collinge

The inspiration for many of Regina Pilawuk Wilson’s paintings lies in another art form: weaving.

At a roundtable discussion at the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, Wilson explains that her people, the Ngangikurrungurr, who are indigenous to Australia’s Daly River region, had passed on fishnet stitches from generation to generation, each community having its own special stitch. But over time, as whites colonized the land and forced the Aboriginal people to live on reserves and missions (similar to Native American reservations) with strict rules that in many cases aimed to dissolve indigenous cultures and traditions, many of those fishnet stitches were lost.

In the early 1970s, Wilson and her husband started Peppimenarti, a community for the Ngangikurrungurr people, with little more than a tent. They had to leave the mission in order to practice their culture, their art, their language, says Wilson.

Wilson, a master weaver, sought to revive the fishnet stitches her ancestors used. Carrying a photograph of her mother with a piece of fishnet her grandfather had stitched, Wilson searched for someone who could teach her that particular stitch. She visited many “very old” women before finding one who remembered the stitch. Wilson then painted the stitch onto canvas, brushstroke by brushstroke, ensuring that it would be visible and not lost again.

“It’s like a story that’s been there forever,” says Wilson’s granddaughter, Leaya. “It’s like putting a culture in a canvas, a painting—it’s strong.”

Regina Pilawuk Wilson’s work showcasing her Australian Aboriginal ancestors’ fishnet stitches is on display at Second Street Gallery. Courtesy artist

Second Street Gallery curator Kristen Chiacchia says that when most people think of contemporary art, they think of it in the Western tradition—abstract paintings, severe sculpture—but there’s more to it. Contemporary art “is art of our time, not art of a place,” says Chiacchia. It’s why she wanted to give Wilson’s work a solo show at Second Street Gallery and give Charlottesville the chance to see contemporary art that will challenge expectations.

Wilson’s work remembers the past in order to understand the present and a promise of the future. It’s there in the title of show, “Ngerringkrrety” which, Wilson explains, means, “from our ancestors, we hold it very strong.”—Erin O’Hare

First Fridays: June 1

Angelo Jewelry 220 E. Main St. “Striation Series: Brazilian Tides & North Shore Waters,” featuring intimate drawings and mosaic mirrors by Eileen Butler.

Annie Gould Gallery 121B S. Main St., Gordonsville. An exhibition of works by Brigitte Turquois Freeman, Hannah Huthwaite, Mary Jane Zander, Carol Barber and Ted Asnis, through June 14. Beginning June 19, Alex Gould exhibits industrial and marine wooden sculpture.

Art on the Trax 5784 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. “Where We Belong,” featuring work by Judith Ely. Open June 9.

FF The Bridge PAI 209 Monticello Rd. “Redefining the Family Photo,” a group exhibition of photography that shows how the definition of family has emerged and morphed in our local experience of celebration, grief and protest. 5-8pm.

Buck Mountain Episcopal Church. 4133 Earlysville Rd., Earlysville. “Welcome Spring!,” a multimedia group show of work by Buck Mountain Episcopal Church artists.

FF The Charlottesville Women’s Initiative 1101 E. High St. “Halcyon Explored,” featuring works from the Fiber and Stitch Collective artists. 5:30-7:30pm.

FF Chroma Projects 103 W. Water St. “An Exaltation of Larks,” a group show including work by Cynthia Burke, Kai Lawson, Kathryn Henry Choisser, Aggie Zed and others. 5-7pm.

FF CitySpace Art Gallery 100 Fifth St. NE. Third-graders share artwork, poems and writing on local change-makers. 5:30-7:30pm.

Crozet Artisan Depot 5791 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. “The Magic of Polymer Clay” featuring work by Judith N. Ligon inspired by the colors, textures and patterns of nature. Opens June 9.

FF C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Virginia’s Wild Things” featuring pyrogravure on leather from Genevieve Story. 6-8pm.

The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd. “In My Room: Artists Paint the Interior 1950-Now”; “20th Century Still Lifes from the Permanent Collection,”  featuring the work of Picasso, Braque and Carrie Mae Weems, among others; “The Art of Protest”; “Reflections: Native Art Across Generations”; and “Oriforme” by Jean Arp.

FF The Garage 100 W. Jefferson St. “This is Charlottesville,” featuring new work from Sarah Cramer Shields’ photography and story project. 5:30-7:30pm.

Jefferson School African American Heritage Center 233 Fourth St. NW. An exhibition of new work by Frank Walker that addresses the notion that black bodies are disposable and easily erased.

Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection 400 Worrell Dr. “Beyond Dreaming: The Rise of Indigenous Australian Art in the United States”; and “Ngunguni: Old Techniques Remain Strong,” an exhibition of paintings on eucalyptus bark from northern Australia.

Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “The Livestock Marker Show,” featuring paintings by Gwyn Kohr, Kathy Kuhlmann and Russ Warren that use livestock markers as the medium. Opens June 9.

Live Arts 123 E. Water St. “Conversations in Wood & Paint,” featuring new work from sculptor Alan Box Levine and painter Jennifer Esser. Through June 8.

FF McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. “Wax, Fire & Fungi,” a four-artist show featuring work made from transformed natural materials, in the Sarah B. Smith Gallery; “Instinct” by Nancy Galloway and Joshua Galloway in the Lower Hall North Gallery; “Where We Live,” an exhibition of work about climate change by Jane Skafte in the Lower Hall South Gallery; “Little Creatures of the Mystery Woods and Other Works in Progress,” macro panoramic photographs by Aaron Farrington in the Upper Hall South Gallery; and Nathan Motley’s “George Harrison and Death Circa 1999-2010” in the Upper Hall North Gallery. 5:30-7:30pm.

FF New Dominion Bookshop 404 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. An exhibition of acrylic paintings by Janet Pearlman. 5-7:30pm.

Noon Whistle Pottery 328 Main St., Stanardsville. “Color Concerto,” featuring the paintings of Diane Velasco and Jane Angelhart. Opens June 2.

FF Roy Wheeler Downtown Office 404 Eighth St. NE. An exhibition of work from Kailey and Melissa Reid. 5-7pm.

FF Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. In the main gallery, “Ngerringkrrety: One Voice, Many Stories,” an exhibition of paintings and weaving by Australian Aboriginal artist Regina Pilawuk Wilson. In The Backroom @SSG, a show of mixed media pieces by Sahara Clemons. 5:30-7:30pm.

Sidetracks Music 310 Second St. SE. “Bossa Nova,” featuring paintings by Jum Jirapan. June 2, 2-5pm.

Shenandoah Valley Art Center 122 S. Wayne Ave., Waynesboro. A members’ anniversary show judged by Leah Stoddard. June 2, 5-7pm.

FF Studio IX 969 Second St. SE. “Growers,” a show of collaborative works by Jeremy and Allyson Taylor that examines how humans interact with the natural world. 5-8pm.

FF Top Knot Studio 103 Fifth St. SE. “In the Land Where Poppies Bloom,” an exhibition by Golara Haghtalab featuring acrylic, spray paint and watercolor works on canvas that explore feelings of childhood nostalgia. 6-9pm.

FF VMDO Architects 200 E. Market St. An exhibition of work by multimedia artist Emmaline Thacker. 5:30-7:30pm.

FF Welcome Gallery 114 Third St. NE. “TRIO,” featuring three visually different, but thematically connected, bodies of work by Abby Kasonik. 5-7:30pm.

FF First Fridays is a monthly art event featuring exhibit openings at many downtown art galleries and additional exhibition venues. Several spaces offer receptions.