Tag: Local artist

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Hive minded: Rayne MacPhee imagines the honeybees’ revenge with “Swarm”

Rayne MacPhee’s “Swarm,” an exhibition about the plight of the honeybee, is on view at the New City Arts Welcome Gallery through the month of August. The show includes this piece, "Chicago Covered in Honeycomb." Image courtesy the artist

Rayne MacPhee thought her dad was having a midlife crisis. Apropos of nothing, he’d announced to the family that he was going to start keeping bees in their Greenville, South Carolina, yard. The next weekend, there they were: A few hives and thousands of honeybees.

MacPhee didn’t pay much attention to her dad’s new hobby until she saw the inside of a hive with her own eyes. “It was instant magic,” she says about what she saw: an apiary metropolis full of activity, like a golden, amazing-smelling New York City, she says. “It’s so busy. And the buzz…it does something to you.”

She may have thought beekeeping was her dad’s midlife crisis, but it turned out to be her passion. About a decade later, MacPhee’s not only keeping honeybees in her Charlottesville-area yard, she’s making artwork about them. Her first local solo show, “Swarm,” is about the plight of the honeybee, and it’s on view at the New City Arts Welcome Gallery through the month of August.

Artist and beekeeper Rayne MacPhee with some of her honeybees. “The buzz…it does something to you,” she says. Image courtesy subject

Perhaps you’ve heard the news: Honeybees are dying at record high rates in America. According to a Bee Informed Partnership survey released in June of this year, between April 1, 2018 and April 1 2019, beekeepers reported losing about 40.7 percent of their managed honeybee hives, on top of a 40.1 percent loss the previous year.

It’s due to a constellation of reasons, including global warming and climate change; increased use of insecticides; and the increased prevalence of cell phone towers, whose signals have been shown by some studies to interfere with how bees communicate and navigate. And then there’s colony collapse disorder, a still-mysterious phenomenon in which worker bees suddenly abandon their colony, leaving behind a vulnerable queen and some nurse bees to care for the baby bees.

We should be concerned, says MacPhee. Managed honeybees contribute $20 billion to the value of U.S. crop production, according to the American Beekeeping Federation. Blueberries, cherries, apples, and broccoli are almost exclusively pollinated by honeybees, and almond trees are entirely dependent on them. No honeybees, no almonds.

So, you want to help the bees…

You don’t have to keep hives to help out honeybees—you can start by just reconsidering your lawn. Think about it: Unless you’re raising cows or other grazers, you don’t really need all that grass. Bees love trees, says MacPhee, so consider planting a few more of them. Or plant a small pollinator garden that doesn’t require much tending, but can be very beneficial for honeybees and your own olfactory pleasure—aromatic lavender and basil are a good place to start, says MacPhee. Here in the Charlottesville area, a lot of folks spray for mosquitoes (understandable), but those chemicals can harm helpful insects (like honeybees). Instead of spraying, try prevention first—eliminating places around your home where water can collect, or putting up a bat house (bats eat thousands of mosquitoes a day).

MacPhee keeps two or three hives at a time, and she says that each has its own personality—some are pretty chill, others are more aggressive about her presence near the hives—and cleverly-named queen (Bee-yonce, Bee-thoven). Every year for the past few years, she’s lost half her hives. And since each hive can house up to 16,000 bees, that’s tens of thousands of bees, dead.

“I started to get really, really angry about it,” she says, in part because, as a backyard (non-commercial) beekeeper, she forms the sort of relationship with her hives that some people might have with their cats or dogs. MacPhee herself does not use insecticides, but because honeybees can fly distances of up to three miles, if anyone within a three mile distance sprays their lawn with, say, Raid Yard Guard, MacPhee’s honeybees can be affected.

In her anger, MacPhee wondered: What would bees do if they could take their revenge on us? They’d cover cities in honeycomb, she decided. Hives are rather city-like, after all.

MacPhee took a series of urban plans—including Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago; Siena, Italy; and Aleppo, Syria—and drew thousands of hexagons atop them to build bulbous, globby, two-dimensional honeycomb in pencil and India ink rather than beeswax. They’re oddly beautiful and curiously compelling. They’re also fairly large (about four feet by six feet), so the viewer has no choice but to confront these honeycomb cities and the message contained therein, that the bees are dying and we need to do something about it.

The same goes for the pieces incorporating taxidermied bees. As MacPhee’s hives have died over the years, she’s preserved the bodies of bees from her favorite hives and affixed them to pieces of paper in such a way that they mimic honeybee flight patterns. “I want someone to look at it and really face their impact here. You can’t avoid it when you’re looking at, well, dead [bee] bodies,” she says.

“Swarm” is about bees taking their revenge on humans (the ones who use the aforementioned insecticides that are so dangerous to bees’ existence), but there’s something hopeful about it, says MacPhee, in that it imagines how honeybees could reclaim their homes that have been stolen from them.

MacPhee knows a little about reclaiming what has been taken. She says of this work, “it was the first time in my life that I ever made work that was truly my own…a concept born out of thinking and working, and I wasn’t trying to emulate anyone’s style,” and a big chunk of it was stolen, along with her car, earlier this year. Her car was recovered but her work was not, and she had to begin all over again. But her idea remained, and she could continue on. Honeybees, she fears, might not be so fortunate.

As Welcome Gallery visitors move through “Swarm,” MacPhee hopes they consider their own human relationship to nature, however conflicting and complex it may be. “Nature is beautiful. It’s volatile. It’s precious. It’s destructive,” all at once,” she says. And while these realizations can be overwhelming, “Swarm” is a swell reminder that when tackling big problems, looking at art is often a good place to start.

Rayne MacPhee’s “Swarm,” an exhibition about the plight of the honeybee, is on view at the New City Arts Welcome Gallery through the month of August. 

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Abode

Form and color: Christina Osheim’s sublime ceramics

Osheim’s aesthetic reflects mid-century modern style and her Scandinavian roots. Photo: Christina Osheim

Christina Osheim distills a wealth of fine arts education and diverse influences into her ceramics. She studied at Minnesota’s St. Olaf College, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Cranbrook Academy of Art before establishing her Charlottesville studio, Möbius Keramikk, at 1740 Broadway St. Her wheel-thrown objects (cups and tumblers) and items with stenciled patterns (plates and tiles) show great skill and originality. But her one-off cast pieces set her work apart.

“These objects—they are cast, but they are canvases,” says Osheim, a third-generation Norwegian-American. “My duty as an artist is to create patterns in color that highlight their three-dimensionality.”

Hence the word Möbius in her studio name: It refers to the poem “Möbius Strip” by French surrealist Robert Desnos, and to the flat-but-twisted loop associated with the infinity symbol as well as the transition from two to three dimensions.

Discovering her creations online or at events, customers have taken note, and orders pour in from across the United States all the way to Paris.

What do people see in her art? Modernism, surrealism, elegance and simplicity. These attributes stem from her Scandinavian roots, her education in sculpture, her time at Cranbrook (the “incubator” of mid-century modernism), and influences including director David Lynch, sculptor Louise Bourgeois, and assemblage artist Joseph Cornell.

A sense of playfulness is also evident. Osheim tells the story of once creating a ceramic chamber pot—a reference to Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain,” a porcelain urinal submitted, but never displayed, at the 1917 Society of Independent Artists show in New York.

It’s difficult to sum up what makes Osheim’s ceramics so compelling. But a line on her website (mobiuskeramikk.com) gets close: “Her work explores the concepts of ‘high’ art in everyday objects with humor and intellect.”

We agree, and feel fortunate to have Osheim as part of Charlottesville’s arts community.

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Arts

Wandering heart: Remembering Gabe Allan

“The Messenger” was cast into bronze fairly recently, at a Santa Fe foundry, and Gabe Allan exhibited the work at Burning Man before bringing it home to IX Art Park last year. A celebration of Allan’s life will be held on Saturday, April 27, at 2pm at The Haven. Photo by Brian Wimer

Over the past few weeks, Charlottesville artists have been mourning the loss and celebrating the life and work of one of their own. Local sculptor Gabriel Allan, whose larger-than-life bronze sculpture of a fire-winged man, “The Messenger,” is at IX Art Park, died March 15.

Gabe, who grew up mostly in Crozet and Charlottesville, lived a lot of life in his 37 years, say his family and friends.

From the time he was young, he was creative, caring, and comfortable taking risks. As a kid, he skateboarded, snowboarded, and ziplined with friends. He hiked all over the region, and, when his home country could no longer satisfy his curiosity, he hiked through Europe and visited Paris, where he “spent three weeks haunting the Rodin museum” says his father, Freeman Allan.

He visited China many times and became fluent in Mandarin; he took a motorcycle trip to a remote part of the Tibetan plateau; and he once found himself huddled around a fire with yak herders, eating sheep broth, and singing songs in two languages. Most recently, Gabe visited Ulan Bator, Mongolia, where he made plans to visit shamans near the Siberian border.

Gabe Allan, age 17, in front of “The Thinker” at the Rodin Museum. Photo courtesy of Freeman Allan

He was always seeking something. “Gabe was a sincere and devout Buddhist,” says Freeman, who notes that Gabe spent many months on Buddhist retreats all over the world. And he had a sense of humor about the whole thing, says Freeman.

With a smile on his face, Gabe once told his father that his deep meditations often resolved into the “profound koan” (a koan is a riddle demonstrating the inadequacy of logic, leading to enlightenment) of, “I wonder what’s for dinner.”

Gabe was always sharing something, says artist Bolanle Adeboye. The two were housemates and friends, and occasionally she would model for a sculpture or a drawing—Gabe was always asking friends to “strike! And hold!” a pose for his latest work.

Adeboye’s favorite of those works is “The Still Point,” a bronze and stained-glass piece of a woman in motion. Adeboye loves, among other things, the fluidity of the woman’s implied movement, the expression of her face, her hands, her feet—all rather emotional physical details that are difficult to capture, especially in such a hard material.

“The Still Point,” by Gabe Allan. Photo courtesy of Bolanle Adeboye

He was “a self-generating cycle of creative awesomeness,” says Adeboye. She’s not sure how he did it, but he could “channel light and love for other people even when he was in darkness. He was generous and kind. He loved chocolate. He was a really good dancer. He was beautiful.”

It’s part of what made Gabe such a good artist. “What has always amazed me about our son was the breadth of his sympathy and vision, artistically, emotionally, and spiritually,” says Freeman, who continues to find more evidence of this as he leafs through his son’s sketchbooks.

“I will love the man all the days of my life,” says local sculptor Robert Bricker. “Gabe is huge in my heart.” Bricker met Gabe when Gabe was finishing his art degree at UVA and wanting to work on a large-scale sculpture, “a grand expression” that Bricker, who has a studio at McGuffey and runs Bronze Craft Foundry out in Waynesboro, was happy to encourage.

That grand expression is “The Messenger.” The sculpture “threw down the gauntlet” for what a student sculptor could do, says Bricker. “It’s larger than life. It’s highly expressive,” and Gabe created it when he was in his early 20s. “It’s an extraordinary work by any sculptor, and it just shows his brilliance, that he did it at a young age,” says Bricker, who adds that world-renowned artist and sculptor Cy Twombly (for whom Bricker cast bronze) was quite taken with the sculpture when he saw it, in its wax form, at Bricker’s foundry.

A celebration of Allan’s life will be held on Saturday, April 27, at 2pm at The Haven.

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Arts

April Galleries

Born and raised in Philadelphia, Andy Faith’s favorite thing to do as a kid was visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art to look at Marcel Duchamp’s found art pieces. She’s been making her own work from found materials since 1994, the latest of which are on view at McGuffey Art Center throughout the month of April. Photo by Martyn Kyle

Soft morning light filters in through the window of Andy Faith’s studio in the basement of McGuffey Art Center, and try as it might, the light can’t possibly illuminate every object on every shelf in the place.

There’s an old Monticello Dairy ice cream carton, yellowed and full of rusty nails; tea bags; rough slabs of wood; metal cages; doll eyes she found in Paris; plastic dice of many colors; scraps of cheesecloth; jars of doll pieces labeled “breasts + other body parts,” or “penises”; aging clockworks; various animal skulls; and a small box of tiny bones that tinkle when Faith runs her hands gently through them.

She laughs as she looks around at her beloved materials—she can hardly find anything when she wants it, but still manages to create. It helps to have a deadline, says Faith, like the one for “untitled,” her show on view in McGuffey’s Upstairs South Hall Gallery throughout the month of April.

“Protector” is one of the pieces featured in Faith’s show at McGuffey this month. Photo courtesy of the artist

“It’s sort of political,” she says about the show, with pieces like “Even If You Don’t Believe, Please Pray for Them,” dedicated to the children who have been, and continue to be, separated from their parents at the U.S. border. There are pieces on racism, on incarceration, on sexism, and a few totems. “But that’s what it is. That’s what’s happening,” she says, and these things are on her mind constantly.

For Faith, making this work is healing, and she hopes it will be for the viewer, too. Some folks may think it’s scary, and she understands that, but it’s protective and beautiful in its raw vulnerability.

Sometimes, art has to break a viewer’s heart in order to heal it. —Erin O’Hare

Openings

Chroma Projects Gallery Inside Vault Virginia, Third St. SE. “Luminous Structures,” a show of works by glass artist Emily Williams and painter Elaine Rogers. 5-7pm.

CitySpace 100 Fifth St. NE. “It’s A Music Town,” a multimedia exhibition curated by Rich Tarbell and Coy Barefoot that explores the sights, sounds, and stories of Charlottesville in the modern rock era. 5-8:30pm.

C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Once Upon a Time: Clocks with a Story,” featuring clocks made by tinkering guru Allan Young. 6-8pm.

Dovetail Design & Cabinetry 309 E. Water St. “New Home: Same Mountainside,” watercolor and mixed media works by Leah Claire Larsen. 5-7pm.

Home Sweet Home Realty 1050 Druid Ave. Ste. A. “Reflections, Illusions and Dreams,” a show of work by Casey Woodzell. 5pm.

Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Picasso, Lydia and Friends, Vol. IV,” featuring 12 Picasso prints as well as works from seven friends of the late modernist art professor and painter Lydia Gasman. 1-5pm.

Live Arts 123 E. Water St. A show of light box works by Bolanle Adeboye.

McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In the Sarah B. Smith Gallery, “Albemarle in Winter,” a show of watercolor images of Albemarle County; in the Downstairs North and South Hall Galleries, “Pink,” a group show of 11 artists examining how pink is relevant to their work; in the Upstairs North Hall Gallery, “Under Pressure,” an exhibition of experimental monotype prints by Polly Breckenridge; and in the Upstairs South Hall Gallery, “untitled,” featuring works that are an offering of witness, compassion, and protection for all those who suffer in the world, by A. Faith. 5:30-7:30pm.

Milli Coffee Roasters 400 Preston Ave. An exhibition of original works in oil on canvas by Kris Bowmaster. 7-10pm.

Music Resource Center 105 Ridge St. “Meditative Reflections,” a show of work by Sara Gondwe, who uses crayons, an iron, and fabric paint to create her pieces. 5-7pm.

New Dominion Bookshop 404 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “The Art of Marion Roberts,” featuring photo manipulations. 5-7pm.

Roy Wheeler Realty Co. 404 Eighth St. NE. An exhibition of work by Laura Heyward, who creates in oil, acrylic, pen and ink, printmaking, and collage. 5-7:30pm.

Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. In the main gallery, “OBJECTify,” a joint show of work by painters Michael Fitts and Megan Read; and in the Dové Gallery, “Michelle Gagliano: Murmurations,” an exhibition of paintings that also features sculpture by Robert Strini. 5:30-7:30pm.

Spring Street Boutique 107 W. Main St., Downtown Mall. “NewArt,” featuring paintings by Ell Tresse. 6-8pm.

Studio IX 969 Second St. SE. “Recalibration: New Paintings by Mike Ryan,” in which the artist explores pattern and shape, creating without restraints. 5:30-7:30pm.

VMDO Architects 200 E. Market St. “Myths, Monsters, and General Mayhem,” an exhibition of acrylic works on masonite board by Sara Knipp. 5:30-7:30pm.

Welcome Gallery 114 Third St. NE. “Sculpture and Color,” featuring works by sculptor Robert Strini and painter Ken Horne. 5-7:30pm.

WriterHouse 508 Dale Ave. “A Place To Call,” a show of photography and mixed- media pieces by Alden Myers and Liza Wimbish. 5-7pm.

WVTF RadioIQ 216 W. Water St. “Love Breathes in Two Countries,” featuring work by local landscape artists Christen Yates and Brittany Fan. 5-7pm.

Other April shows

Annie Gould Gallery 109 S. Main St., Gordonsville. A show of paintings by Jane Skafte and Sue DuFour. Through May 26.

The Bridge PAI 209 Monticello Rd. “Desencabronamiento,” an exhibition of Federico Cuatlacuatl’s sculptural kites and video that explore tradition and culture as political weapons. Kite workshops, exhibition, talk, and mural paintings throughout the week of April 8, in conjunction with the Tom Tom Founders Festival. Exhibition officially opens April 14, 7-10pm.

Buck Mountain Episcopal Church 4133 Earlysville Rd., Earlysville. “The Ten,” featuring multi-media abstract paintings by Philip J. Marlin.

Commonwealth Restaurant 422 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Linear Motion,” featuring illustrations by Martin Phillips.

Connaughton Gallery McIntire School of Commerce at UVA. “Looking In and Looking Out,” featuring works in watercolor, pen, and ink on canvas by Kaki Dimock, and works in acrylic on canvas by Brittany Fan. Opens March 18.

Crozet Artisan Depot 571 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. “Jake’s Clay Art: Animation and Energy,” a show of Jake Johnson’s colorful pottery.

Fellini’s 200 Market St. “Owned,” an exhibition of pastels by Cat Denby.

The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd. “Pompeii Archive: Recent Photographs by William Wylie,” through April 21; Vanessa German’s installation, “sometimes.we.cannot.be.with.our.bodies”; “The Print Series in Bruegel’s Netherlands: Dutch and Flemish Works from the Permanent Collection”; “Of Women, By Women,” an exhibition curated by the University’s museum interns that explores the power inherent in the act of taking a photograph; and “Oriforme” by Jean Arp.

Java Java 421 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. A multimedia show by the members of the BozART Fine Art Collective, including Carol Barber, Randy Baskerville, Betty Brubach, Matalie Deane, Joan Dreicer, Frank Feigert, Sara Gondwe, Anne de Latour Hopper, Julia Kindred, Julia Lesnichy, Amy Shawley Paquette, and Juliette Swenson.

Jefferson School African American Heritage Center 233 Fourth St. NW “Deborah Willis: In Pursuit of Beauty” examines how beauty is posed, imagined, critiqued, and contested. Through April 27.

Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection 400 Worrell Dr. “Kent Morris: Unvanished,” a series of digitally constructed photographs that explores the relationship between contemporary Indigenous Australian identity and the modern built environment; “Beyond Dreamings: The Rise of Indigenous Australian Art in the United States.”

Random Row Brewery 608 Preston Ave. A show of mixed media works in crayon and fabric paint by Sara Gondwe.

Shenandoah Valley Art Center 122 S. Wayne Ave., Waynesboro. “Awakening,” Sandra Luckett’s multimedia exhibition that is a monument to spiritual rebirth. Opens April 6, 5-7pm.

Tandem Friends School 279 Tandem Ln. The Charlottesville Area Quilters Guild Biennial Quilt Show, featuring work from more than 135 members from four area chapters. April 6 and 7.

Vitae Spirits Distillery 715 Henry Ave. A show of watercolors, some incorporating calligraphy, by Terry M. Coffey.

Woodberry Forest School Baker Gallery, Walker Fine Arts Center 898 Woodberry Forest Rd., Woodberry Forest. “Seasons Of and In Mind,” featuring paintings by Linda Verdery.

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Arts

Familiar and mysterious: John Grant explores the role of flowers in ‘Attraction’

John Grant’s “Attraction,” which includes the piece "Dahlia Mary Ann," seen here, is on view at Second Street Gallery through January 18. Image courtesy of the artist

On the cusp of winter, the garden behind John Grant and Stacey Evans’ home is a spectrum of browns, greens, bare trees, bamboo shoots, and naked stems. It’s all askew as the fading light of day shines orange through the spaces formerly occupied by verdant leaves and vibrant blooms.

Gardening season has passed, but it’s easy to imagine the trees bursting with green growth, beds full of tulips, ranunculus, zinnias, foxgloves, dahlias, roses, anemones (Evans’ favorite), poppies (Grant’s favorite), and whatever else they manage to grow.

The garden works out well: Evans likes to plant the flowers, and Grant likes to pick them. Grant also likes to make art with them. In fact, many of the blooms in “Attraction,” Grant’s show of larger-than-life botanical works now on view at Second Street Gallery through January 18, were plucked from this very garden.

Grant’s interest in visual art began in photography, when he served in the Navy during the Vietnam War (“I had a bad draft number,” he says). One of his fellow shipmen had a camera, and when they were in port, they’d disembark to photograph the sights, in Australia, New Zealand, Guam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, The Philippines, and Alaska—when they docked in Japan, Grant purchased a camera of his own.

After the Navy, a graphic design career led him to publishing (he co-owned Thomason Grant, which published children’s and photography books from local and nationally known writers and photographers), and then to a lengthy stint as vice president of creative for Crutchfield Corporation. During his 12 years at Crutchfield, technology changed drastically—and his attention turned to digital scanning.

Flamboyant, 2018, 38 x 38 inches; mounted sheet: 43 x 43 inches. Image courtesy the artist

“Somehow, I started scanning flowers,” says Grant.

Both of Grant’s parents were master gardeners, as were his paternal grandparents. His mother practiced Ikebana—the Japanese art of flower arranging—and he was always captivated by the colors, the textures, and the relationship between the flowers.

Grant found that the scans—he’d place the flower on the glass bed of the scanner and leave the cover open so the delicate bloom wasn’t crushed, then scan the flower at a high resolution and make a larger-than-life print of it—resonated with colleagues.

Eventually he began selling scans of “new and fresh-looking” flowers to stock photography company Getty Images, and they sold so well Grant was able to leave Crutchfield. One photograph, of a red and white ruffled tulip, was used on the cover of Stephanie Meyer’s mega-best-seller Twilight: New Moon. The more picture-perfect botanical scans he sold, the more he started to wonder: What is it about flowers?

“Some people have a truly visceral response to botanicals,” he says. We plant flowers in gardens and clip them from their stems to display in vases on our tables. We give them as gifts. We wear them on our clothes. We spray their essence on our skin. Grant says he can’t quite put his finger on the why, but he knows that attraction has something to do with it.

“The whole element of attraction in our lives is a really important thing to become aware of, because it may be very, very close to the core of our existence,” he says. “That we have that feeling of attraction, whether it’s for flowers or another person, or any kind of thing, if you start to think about what it feels like to be attracted, and pull it apart, it’s a really cool concept, a really deep subject that we gloss over.”

Viewers may be drawn to the pieces in “Attraction” for their size. All of the works are large, (some are more than three feet on each side), and afford a close look at each individual petal, stem, stamen, and bead of pollen. Some of the images—a white ranunculus with a jammy purple center, a white dahlia with a smear of pollen, a hot pink hybrid gerbera daisy—pop forth from black backgrounds, like planets floating in space, at once familiar and mysterious.

Anemones, 2018, 30 x 32 inches; mounted 37 x 35 inches. Image courtesy the artist

In some cases, Grant has pulled the flowers apart—removed the petals from a red tulip, or a foxglove, and rearranged them. Others (“Iris Ocean,” “Offering”) are more experimental, where Grant uses water, acetate, and paint to create different types of backgrounds and atmospheres.

“Magnolia in Repose,” which depicts a browning magnolia bloom on a stark black background, explores the beauty of dying blooms, sad and lovely in how the petals begin to curl in upon themselves.

All of the works highlight the singularity of the blooms, what Grant likes to call the “body language” of the individual flowers. How one seems a bit bashful, another proud. A grouping of two poppies might look like lovers, while five or six poppies together may look like they’re having a party. “Attraction” is not a show about perfection, says Grant. “I’m not into capturing a storybook flower.”

Grant’s botanicals are rather scientific, and they are also quite emotional—people tend to separate the two, says Grant, but there’s something to be said for combining close examination with emotion.

“It’s a way of taking things inside so that you can live with it, and so that you can understand your relationship to it more fully,” he says. “The more you observe, the more overpowered you are with that sort of magnitude of greatness of our being.”

John Grant’s “Attraction” is on view at Second Street Gallery through January 18.

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Arts

Drawing attention: Uzo Njoku’s The Bluestocking Society colors outside the lines

In The Bluestocking Society coloring book, Uzo Njoku portrays women doing both everyday and extraordinary things, showing women that there is no limit to who they can aspire to be. Photo by Amy Jackson

A few months ago, artist Uzo Njoku was in the market for a new coloring book.

She noticed that most coloring books geared toward adults, like the ubiquitous Enchanted Garden, featured densely outlined flora and fauna, medallions, and mandalas, and that most coloring books for children contained cartoonish figures.

Njoku, a UVA studio art major who paints large-scale works of dark-skinned subjects (most of them women) against bright, bold-patterned backgrounds referencing Ankara fabrics, sought a different type of coloring book—one with more realistic figures, but still with the density of pattern and sense of magic that makes coloring a therapeutic activity.

But she couldn’t find what she wanted, so she decided to draw and publish her own. The result, The Bluestocking Society, has sold more than 1,000 copies since it was released last month, and Njoku has consignment contracts with bookstores all over the East Coast, including New Dominion Bookshop and Telegraph Art & Comics here in town; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond; and Clic Bookstore & Gallery in New York City.

Each page of The Bluestocking Society shows a different aspect of femininity, with particular focus on women of color.

Njoku, who was born in Lagos, Nigeria, and has lived in the U.S. since she was 7 years old, says she wants to create art that is “meaningful…impactful,” especially for women and people of color in her own community, at UVA and in Charlottesville, two places where she says women and people of color do not always feel welcome.

Artist Uzo Njoku wants her coloring book to be both therapeutic and educational. In addition to drawing the women in the book, she researched their lives and accomplishments for a one-page biography included next to each woman’s page. Photo by Amy Jackson

With her paintings, Njoku aims to show how women and people of color are valuable, that they have voices that deserve to be heard. But she’s aware that not everyone can afford to purchase a painting or a print to hang on their wall at home and remind them of that message, so a coloring book was an accessible way to offer her work.

Njoku chose a title that invokes the Blue Stockings Society, an informal women’s social, intellectual, and educational movement founded and led by salonist and literary critic Elizabeth Montagu in mid-18th-century England. Members of the Blue Stockings Society championed the importance of education for women, and it inspired Njoku to include contemporary women like Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist who at age 15 spoke out against the Taliban’s ban on girls’ education and, not long after that speech, survived an assassination attempt on her life and now continues her work fighting for girls’ education.

Njoku wants her coloring book to be both therapeutic and educational. In addition to drawing the women in the book, she researched their lives and accomplishments for a one-page biography included next to each woman’s page.

Njoku also presents every woman as her own person, because she believes that too often, they are discussed only in the context of men’s lives. Take, for example, Dolores Huerta, a Mexican-American labor leader and civil rights activist who co-founded the National Farmworkers Association (later United Farm Workers) with Cesar Chavez, the name and face more commonly associated with the movement.

Or Yoko Ono, a groundbreaking multimedia artist, musician, performance artist, filmmaker, and peace activist (John Lennon was her husband). “She’s amazing on her own,” Njoku says of Ono, just like every woman.

In addition to Yousefzai, Huerta, and Ono, there’s decorated tennis player Serena Williams, artist Frida Kahlo, political activist and writer Angela Davis, and sprinter Cathy Freeman, the first Aboriginal Australian woman to compete in the Olympics, in 1996. “And of course, I had to include Beyoncé,” says Njoku.

Njoku also included drawings of women with no specified identity—women graduating from college and graduate school, an Habesha, women cooking, mothers with their children. She included a drawing of a pregnant teenager, because in society’s eyes, young mothers are talked about as a sad thing, but “there’s beauty in it. You had a child. You brought a being into this world,” and it’s worthy of celebration and respect, says Njoku.

She drew women with specific facial features and body types, because to her, it’s not enough to present a blank page where a woman’s skin can be colored in any hue—brown, dark brown, tan, peach, blue. Even in the line drawings, she wanted to identify these women as women of color—with, for example, black facial features and black hairstyles.

Before one even gets to the drawings, the first page of the book includes a blank frame with the numbers 1 through 5, urging the person reading it to make a list of five things they like about themselves.

At first, Njoku imagined women and girls as the audience for The Bluestocking Society, but she quickly realized the coloring book is for everyone.

The Bluestocking Society urges people of all genders to see these women, and all women, for who they are and what they are capable of. Women contain multitudes, Njoku’s coloring book says, and all women—from the 16-year-old mother to Oprah Winfrey—are equally inspiring.

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Arts

Electric connection: Golara Haghtalab partners with Computers4Kids to see the light

Multi-media artist Golara Haghtalab collaborated with Computers4Kids to create an interactive artwork titled “Seasons of Light: A Kinetic Experience.” The installation is at The Gallery at Studio IX August 3 through September 2. Photo by Dan Addison

On an overcast and humid evening on the Downtown Mall, multi- media artist Golara Haghtalab seems to fill the Mudhouse with light. She recognizes a barista from when she worked there “a long time ago,” and though Haghtalab can’t remember his name at first, she still strikes up a spirited conversation. With that same palpable, kinetic energy, Haghtalab reflects on her identity as a Turkmen, Iranian and Muslim immigrant.

“The mirror of who you are shatters when you immigrate,” Haghtalab says. “I came to America and the mirror of my identity shattered.”

Haghtalab repeatedly returns to this image of shattered mirror as central to who she is as a maker, scientist and Iranian immigrant. She feels drawn to the Japanese art of kintsugi, which is both a method of repairing art and a philosophy that celebrates what is broken. To fix a cracked piece of pottery, Japanese artists practicing kintsugi fill gaps using gold, silver or platinum-dusted lacquer.

“My philosophy of life is like this art,” says Haghtalab. “When something breaks, they fix it with gold to keep the experience of it, to nourish it and to make it more beautiful.”

Nearly seven years ago, while Haghtalab was in her third year of architecture school, the U.S. Department of State randomly selected her to win a diversity visa. Within six months, Haghtalab, her parents and siblings immigrated to Charlottesville. As lifelong advocates of education, Haghtalab’s parents chose Charlottesville for its proximity to UVA. In Iran and in the United States, Haghtalab says they remained “encouraging in every aspect of education.”

During her first few years in Charlottesville, Haghtalab felt “totally lost.” She found the “machine” of American culture isolating and “scary,” and missed the architecture, culture, stories and languages of Islamic and Persian cultures. After being admitted to and enrolling at UVA, Haghtalab “once again found [her] balance.” She fulfilled a double-major in chemistry and studio art and graduated in May 2017.

“The last three years have been the best in my life…I was able to figure out who I am,” says Haghtalab. “One of my findings through my rediscovery is that I love the arts and sciences together. I stand between these two.”

After graduation Haghtalab worked at BrightSpec, a local startup that specializes in molecular rotational resonance spectroscopy. The company developed a unique software that allows scientists to more quickly obtain the chemical makeup of samples. Haghtalab says her time at BrightSpec greatly impacted her art-making approach and processes, learning ”about chemistry, waves and mirrors, which started to make me feel curious about how to use these materials in my art.”

As a Tom Tom Founders Festival artist-in-residence at The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative this past April, Haghtalab incorporated many of those elements in her exhibition “Who is your RGB self?” The solo show featured dance, paintings, poetry and sculptural elements like CDs woven together with metal chains. Haghtalab points out an interactive piece of the exhibition that rendered visitors’ shadows in hues of red, green and blue.

“You see your shadow go in three different directions,” Haghtalab says. “And when you interact with other people, it changes colors.”

After a two-month collaboration with Computers4Kids’ youth members, Haghtalab’s participation- and technology-based art will light up The Gallery at Studio IX for a First Fridays reception on August 3. Though the collaborative installation is titled “Seasons of Light: A Kinetic Experience,” Haghtalab refers to the roughly four-foot by three-foot piece in anatomical terms. The “skin” is a painting of a willow tree that uses limited pigments and might be what viewers see first, Haghtalab explains. Arduino programmable circuit boards, color-changing LED lights and sensors behind the thin painting make up the artwork’s “bones” and “nervous system.”

Haghtalab and mentees at Computers- 4Kids artfully fused each of these elements together to create the experience of watching a willow tree change through nature’s four seasons. As viewers approach the piece, the tree’s leaves go from green to red, orange and yellow. Lights in blue and yellow hues will also illuminate a body of water near the willow tree and the sun, and Haghtalab hopes the exhibition will include in-process images featuring Computers4Kids members. 

She says she never imagined she would work with children to complete a piece like “Seasons of Light,” and now “all [she] wants to do is work with kids.” Haghtalab calls herself a STEAMer—an advocate for science, technology, engineering, arts and math. She believes that the future of education is in making those disciplines more inclusive.

“I don’t like to say we need to empower women. We are already powerful,” says Haghtalab. By bringing children together to experience the arts and STEM fields, “you remove the fear.”

“When you work hands-on, you bring everything together. It’s teamwork,” Haghtalab says. “The only indicator of your success is if a lightbulb turns on.”

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Arts

First Fridays: August 3

Sam Gray’s premiere solo show, “Gaean Reveries,” is on view in the Sarah B. Smith Gallery at McGuffey Art Center through August 19. Photo by Martyn Kyle

“The root of my inspiration—pun intended—is firmly planted in the natural world,” says local artist Sam Gray. “When I’m feeling crazy, the best medicine is to go into the woods and be with the mosses, trees, herbs, fungi and critters,” she says. “I find a lot of magic in that connection.”

That connection between the natural world and the human soul is what Gray explores in the paintings and drawings of her premiere solo show, “Gaean Reveries,” currently on view in the McGuffey Art Center’s Sarah B. Smith Gallery. The work “is characterized by feminist, witchy, natural motifs that viewers will take in as they will,” she says.

For instance, there’s a painting of a pink uterus, ovaries, fallopian tubes and cervix intertwined with pink roses on a blue background. Another painting is of a grapefruit, pulled in half, juice dripping from the wedges still enclosed in the pith as a snake curls around it. In yet another, a vulva emerges from the center of a rose.

When Gray creates, she doesn’t anticipate how viewers might react to her work—“that would dilute my own creativity,” she says—and so she focuses on channeling what comes from within her, or through her, and it’s developed into an individual style she calls “anthro-botanical surrealism.”

Gray especially didn’t anticipate how viewers might react to paintings of vaginas and uteruses, and she worried for a moment that the work might be censored. But that wasn’t the case, and gallery-goers have been supportive of the work. She’s even overheard a few comments about parents wanting to take their daughters to “the vagina exhibit.”

Gray doesn’t want to tell viewers of her work what to see, or feel, but she’ll share a small seed of suggestion: “I hope that my work helps encourage people to slow down and be curious so that they can see magic around themselves more often,” and perhaps “learn to apply their eyes in new ways to the world around them.”

August Gallery Listings

Annie Gould Gallery 121B S. Main St., Gordonsville. An exhibition of industrial and marine wooden sculpture by Alex Gould; and a show of work from more than 25 artists, including Donna Ernest and Barbara Venerus.

FF Chroma Projects 103 W. Water St. “Colorforms,” acrylic, organic paintings by Iranian-born UVA student Hasti Kahlili. 5-7pm.

FF CitySpace Art Gallery 100 Fifth St. NE. “Roseberry’s Charlottesville,” a photography exhibit of rarely seen snapshots from the Ed Roseberry collection. 5:30-7:30pm.

FF C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “On the Bright Side,” a jewelry art exhibition by Stephen Dalton. 6-8pm.

Darden School of Business 100 Darden Blvd., UVA. “Small Graces,” an exhibition of photographs of UVA’s Pavilion Gardens.

FF Fellini’s 200 Market St. “A Study of Pets in Pencil and Paint,” an exhibition by Maggie Stokes. 5:30-7pm.

FF Firefly 1304 E. Market St. “Finds and Designs,” an exhibition of textured, organic art by Christopher Kelly. 4-9pm.

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; and “Reflections: Native Art Across Generations.”

FF The Garage 100 E. Jefferson St. “Afterimage,” a mixed-media exhibition by Caroline Nilsson. 5:30-7:30pm.

FF Java Java Cafe 421 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Source Unknown,” paintings by Steve Keach that speculate on unknowable elements of reality. 5-6pm.

Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection 400 Worrell Dr. “Experimental Beds,” a collection of etchings by Judy Watson.

FF Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Summertime…,” featuring work in acrylics, oils and other mediums by Anne Chesnut, Richard Crozier, Sarah Boyts Yoder and others. 1-5pm.

McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. “Gaean Reveries,” a multimedia, surrealistic exhibition from Sam Gray, in the Sarah B. Smith Gallery; “McGuffey Members’ Summer Group Show,” colorful multimedia works from members of the gallery, in the Downstairs South Hall Gallery and Upstairs North and South Hall Galleries; and The Incubator Show’s “Brood” in the North Hall First Floor Gallery. Through August 19.

FF Milli Coffee Roasters 400 Preston Ave., Ste. 150. “Dimensions and Dreamscapes,” an exhibition of oil paintings by Scott Marzano. 7-10pm.

FF Mudhouse 213 W. Main St., Downtown Mall. “UTOPIA,” a multimedia expressionist exhibition by Adam Martin Disbrow. 6-8pm.

FF New City Arts Initiative 114 Third St. NE. “Cville People Everyday,” a photography exhibit by Eze Amos. 5-7:30pm.

The Salad Maker 300 E. Market St. “Exploring the Bounds of Digital Art,” an exhibition of richly colored work by Martin Phillips.

Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital 500 Martha Jefferson Dr. “Luminous Landscapes,” featuring work by impressionist artist Lee Nixon. Opens Aug. 14.

Shenandoah Valley Art Center 122 S. Wayne Ave., Waynesboro. An exhibition of Gene Provenzo’s work in the Cabell/Arehart Gallery; the Gerry Coe Memorial Exhibit in the Hallway Gallery; and an interpretation of the theme blue by Art Center members in the Member’s Gallery.

FF Spring Street Boutique 107 W. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Impressions of Nature,” an exhibition of paintings by Jane Goodman. 6-8pm.

FF Studio IX 969 Second St. SE. “Seasons of Light: A Kinetic Experience,” an interactive, multi-disciplinary art installation created by youth in the Computers4Kids program and Golara Haghtalab. 5-8pm.

Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian-Universalist 717 Rugby Rd. “Portraits and Ankara Patterns,” featuring paintings and collage by Uzo Njoku. Opens Aug. 5, 11:30am.

FF VMDO Architects 200 E. Market St. A series of drawing by Deborah Ku. 5:30-7:30pm.

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