Tag: Sculpture

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February galleries guide

Sculpture and drawings by Phuong Nguyen are on view in “Constructions” at the New City Arts Welcome Gallery this month. Image courtesy artist

Phuong Nguyen’s small wonders

In recent years, artist Phuong Nguyen has learned the truth of a common proverb: Big things do indeed come in small packages.

After graduating from UVA in 2015, she struggled to find a studio that would allow her to paint and print on a large scale. So she changed her creative practice and started working small, drawing with pencil and paper and sculpting with fabric, embroidery thread, beads, and other craft materials.

The shift suits Nguyen’s work well. Small pieces require viewers to slow down, to come closer in order to appropriately understand the message, which, for Nguyen is quite personal and intimate: Her work, on view this month in a solo show, “Constructions,” at the New City Arts Welcome Gallery, explores identity and the trauma of immigration.

“In some ways, it’s hard for me to talk about my experiences,” says Nguyen, who came with her family to the U.S. from Vietnam in 2006. Instead, she says she lets her art do the talking by “making these things, and making them brightly colored and attracting attention, as an avatar…letting them stand for my narrative, it’s helpful and fun.”

Image courtesy Phuong Nguyen

Immigration offered her family more opportunities for a better future, but at a cost, says Nguyen. She didn’t speak English when she started middle school in the States, which often made her feel like an outsider. But art class put her at ease, made her feel confident and helped her communicate with her teachers, her peers, and even herself.

“Looking back on it, I realize the power of art to connect people, and [of art] as therapy. That’s really a powerful tool for me now, for processing,” she says.

Laughter helped her cope, too. After Nguyen spent months tying thousands of tiny French knots on fabric for one piece, she removed the embroidery from the hoop and tossed it over a nearby yogurt cup (which she uses to organize studio materials). “It cracked me up,” she says, and that’s when she knew the piece was complete, yogurt cup and all. “When you know, you just kind of know,” she adds, laughing.

First Fridays: February 7

Openings

The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative 209 Monticello Rd. “Face to Face: Portraits of Our Vibrant City,” an annual exhibition that uses the intimate process of portraiture to connect artists and community members who have different life experiences. 5:30-9:30pm.

Charlottesville Tango 208 E. Water St. “Stillness,” a show of pencil sketches by David Currier. 5-7:30pm.

Veronica Jackson at Chroma Projects

Chroma Projects Inside Vault Virginia, Third Street SE. “That’s Pops’s Money,” an installation of fabricated time cards by Veronica Jackson that relates the story of Jackson’s grandmother’s silently devalued work as a homemaker. 5-7pm.

City Clay 700 Harris St. #104. “Out of the Round,” featuring ceramics by Dina Halme, Beth Bernatowicz, John Williamson, Lauren McQuiston, and Paula Whitmer. 5:30-8pm.

CitySpace 100 Fifth St. NE. “Americans Who Tell The Truth: Climate Change,” part of the Robert Shetterly portrait series. 5-7pm.

C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Drawing on Life with Laughter,” featuring the uplifting and sometimes humorous work of illustrator Jesse Bellavance. 6-8pm.

IX Art Park 522 Second St. SE. “Through the Looking Glass,” an immersive art experience featuring paintings, photography, and mixed- media pieces by artists such as Aaron Farrington, Joe Vena, Kataryzna Borek, Brielle DuFlon, Chicho Lorenzo, and others. 4-6pm.

McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In the Sarah B. Smith Gallery, “Fiber Transformed,” featuring work from Mary Beth Bellah, Lotta Helleberg, Jill Jensen, Jill Kerttula, Lorie McCown, and Wrenn Slocum; in the Lower Hall Galleries, “Arts Beyond the Streets,” an exhibition by the Black Power Station collaborative from Makhanda, South Africa; in the Upper North Hall Gallery, a show by Nate Szarmach; and in the Upper South Hall Gallery, “Serenity in the Mountains,” a show by Alison Thomas. 5:30-7:30pm.

Milli Coffee Roasters 400 Preston Ave. #150. “Art for String Education,” featuring works by Jessie Meehan. 5-7pm.

Mudhouse Coffee 213 W. Main St. “Du Temps Perdu,” featuring paintings by Brian Geiger. 6-8pm.

New Dominion Bookshop 404 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “A Tribute to Eloise,” an exhibition of works by the e salon watercolorists. 5-7pm.

Tanya Minhas at Second Street Gallery

Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. In the Main Gallery, “By the Strength of Their Skin,” paintings by Regina Pilawuk Wilson, Mabel Juli, and Nonggirrnga Marawili, three of Australia’s most acclaimed women artists. In the Dové Gallery, “Nature Tells Its Own Story,” featuring paintings by Pakistani artist Tanya Minhas. 5:30-7:30pm

Spring Street Boutique 107 W. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Be the Bravest Version of Yourself,” featuring oil and canvas and printmaking works by Tomie Deng. 6-8pm.

Welcome Gallery 114 Third St. NE. “Constructions,” sculpture and works on paper exploring identity and the trauma of immigration, by Phuong Duyen Nguyen. 5-7:30pm.

WriterHouse 508 Dale Ave. “What’s Left,” sculpture by Richmond artist Kiel Posner. 5-7pm.

WVTF Radio IQ 216 W. Water St. “Forty Years—Forty Faces,” a series of photographs and written works by Glen McClure and Marshall McClure of folks who have received help from the Virginia Poverty Law Center. 5-7pm.

VMDO Architects 200 E. Market St. “A Colorful Perspective,” featuring watercolor, acrylic, oil, and digital design pieces by Julia Kwolyk. 5:30-7:30pm.

Other February shows

Albemarle County Circuit Court 501 E. Jefferson St. An exhibition of work by members of the Central Virginia Watercolor Guild.

Annie Gould Gallery 109 S. Main St., Gordonsville. Featuring work by Cecelia Schultz, Annie Waldrop, and Chuxin Zhang.

Buck Mountain Episcopal Church 4133 Earlysville Rd., Earlysville. A show of mixed media works on canvas by Paula Boyland.

Mike Sorge at Crozet Artisan Depot

Crozet Artisan Depot 5791 Three Notch’d Rd. Featuring the work of sculptural winged woodturnings and contemporary bowls by Mike Sorge. Reception February 8, 1-3pm.

Crozet Library 2020 Library Ave., Crozet. “Fraile Eden,” a show by underwater photo- grapher Gary Powell.

The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd. “Select Works from the Alan Groh-Buzz Miller Collection”; and “The Inside World: Contemporary Aboriginal Australian Memorial Poles,” and “Figures of Memory.”

Jefferson School African American Heritage Center 233 Fourth St. NW. “A Place Fit for Women,” part of the Robert Shetterly portrait series.

Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Time,” featuring works by Ann Lyne, John McCarthy, and Ana Rendich.”

 

Robert Shetterly at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center

Shenandoah Valley Art Center 122 S. Wayne Ave., Waynesboro. An exhibition of work by mixed media artist Sigrid Eilertson.

Studio IX 969 Second St. SE. “Retrospective,” a show chronicling more than a decade of the “Every Day is a Holiday” calendars made annually by collaborative artists and lifelong friends Eliza Evans and Virginia Rieley.

Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian-Universalist 717 Rugby Rd. “Nature,” featuring watercolor, pastel, and acrylic works by Billie Williams.

UVA Health System main hospital lobby, 1215 Lee St. “Expressions in Color,” featuring works by the Piedmont Pastelists.

UVA McIntire School of Commerce 125 Ruppel Dr. “Encrypted Metamorphosis,” a show of work in a variety of media by Deborah Davis and Craig Snodgrass.

Vitae Spirits Distillery 715 Henry Ave. “Go Wahoos,” a show of UVA-themed acrylic works by Matalie Deane.

Woodberry Forest School 898 Woodberry Forest Rd., Woodberry Forest. “in context.,” featuring paintings in acrylic on canvas and paper by Madeleine Rhondeau-Rhodes.

First Fridays is a monthly art event featuring exhibit openings at many area art galleries and exhibition venues. Several spaces offer receptions. To list an exhibit, email arts@c-ville.com.

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December galleries guide

Aggie Zed’s sculptures are part of “Dancing in their Heads,” on view at Chroma Projects gallery through the month of December. Image courtesy the artist

Creature conflicts

People often describe Aggie Zed’s sculptures as “whimsical,” or “cute.”

“I can see whimsical, but I don’t ever see cute,” says the artist, who uses handmade ceramic and mechanical bits in combination with found materials such as scrap metal, wire, and plastic milk jugs to create what she calls “really dear beings that struggle” with themselves, with one another, and with technology.

Though Zed’s creatures possess both human and animal qualities—a human face beneath a pair of perky rabbit ears, or a dog dancing on human feet—Zed’s work, on view at Chroma Projects gallery through the month of December, is about the human condition. “My work is about people, the kinds of situations humans get themselves into and have to get themselves out of,” she says.

Aggie Zed’s “Catch Me.” Image courtesy the artist

This is evident in the 10-inch-tall sculpture “Catch Me.” As two dogs dance hand in hand among wires and some scaffolding, one stands on tiptoe and leans forward, trusting the bottom dog to catch her. But it’ll be difficult: The bottom dog has already rocked back over its heels, legs splayed out, falling backwards, seemingly prepared to hit the floor. There’s no telling the outcome for these familiar, weird little creatures; perhaps they’ll keep dancing, perhaps they’ll collapse. (Not exactly a “cute” scenario.)

And while the other pieces are smaller, they’re no less complicated in construction and story. “I see most of my characters as being the common man, or the common person—not a creature or being of power,” says Zed, who points out that her work “can get dark” sometimes. “What people do, what people are, there’s certainly dark material there.” But there’s still something hopeful about them. As Zed says, “they look like you want them to succeed.”

Openings

The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative 209 Monticello Rd. “Give + Take,” a swap shop meets free store meets surplus redistribution meets curb alert. 6pm.

Chroma Projects Inside Vault Virginia, Third Street SE. “Dancing in Their Heads,” featuring Aggie Zed’s fantastical animated sculpture, and Kelly Lonergan’s drawings of the subconscious life of his protagonists. 5-7pm.

CitySpace 100 Fifth St. NE. “Best of 2019” a show of work by the Fiber and Stitch Art Collective. 5-7:30pm.

C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “A Clothesline of Characters,” featuring imaginative, hand-knit puppets, mittens, and hats by Mary Whittlesey. 6-8pm.

McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. In all galleries, the McGuffey members holiday shop, featuring ornaments, cards, prints, original art, jewelry, glassware, home decor, and more. 5:30-7:30pm.

Adam Disbrow at Mudhouse

Mudhouse Coffee 213 W. Main St. “CONFLICT/Resolution,” Adam Disbrow’s series reflecting the merger of the “seen” with the “unseen.” 5-7pm.

New Dominion Bookshop 404 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. “New Zealand Watercolors,” an exhibition of work by Blake Hurt. 5-7pm.

Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. In the Main Gallery, “Illuminations & Illusions,” a show of paintings and sculpture spanning more than four decades of Beatrix Ost’s career as a visual artist; and in the Dové Gallery, “The Slow Death of Rocks,” reverse painting on glass and sculpture by Doug Young. 5:30-7:30pm.

Spring Street Boutique 107 W. Main St., Downtown Mall. “Marker’s Edge,” featuring works in marker on paper by Philip Jay Marlin. 6-8pm.

Studio IX 969 Second St. SE. “Retrospective,” a show chronicling more than a decade of the “Every Day is a Holiday” calendars made annually by collaborative artists and lifelong friends Eliza Evans and Virginia Rieley. 5:30-7:30pm.

Terry Coffey’s Studio 230 Court Square, Ste. 101 B. “Good Cheer,” watercolor, acrylic, and oil paintings, as well as handmade jewelry and handpainted birdhouses. 5-7pm.

VMDO Architects 200 E. Market St. “VMDO Artisans,” a mixed-media show of work by Diana Fang, Bethany Pritchard, Maggie Thacker, John Trevor, and others. 5:30-7:30pm.

Welcome Gallery 114 Third St. NE. The 2019 New City artist exchange exhibit, featuring pottery, works on paper, photography, and paintings by Angela Gleeson, Amdane Sanda, Julia Loman, Kori Price, Somé Louis, Steve Haske, and others. 5-7:30pm.

WVTF Radio IQ 216 W. Water St. An exhibition of work by more than a dozen photographers from the Charlottesville Camera Club. 5-7pm.

Yellow Cardinal Studio 301 E. Market St. A show of small works for holiday giving. 4-7pm.

 

Other December shows

Tatiana Yavorksa-Antrobius at Woodberry Forest School

Albemarle County Circuit Court 501 E. Jefferson St. An exhibition of work by members of the Central Virginia Watercolor Guild.

Barn Swallow Artisan Gallery 796 Gillums Ridge Rd. A show of work by jeweler and fiber artist Nancy Bond. December 14, 3-5pm.

Carpediem Exhibit 1429 E. High St. A collection of artwork created by 40 artists and artisans, including Janly Jaggard, V-Anne Evans, and the Geiger family.

The Center 491 Hillsdale Dr. “At Home and Abroad,” photographs by Frank Feigert.

The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA 155 Rugby Rd. “Otherwise,” exploring the influence of LGBTQ+ artists; “Time to Get Ready: fotografia social”; and “Select Works from the Alan Groh-Buzz Miller Collection.”

Free Union Country School 4220 Free Union Rd., Free Union. Artisans’ open house, featuring pottery by Nancy Ross, backgammon boards by Dave Heller, and more. December 7 and 8, 10am-4pm.

The Gallery at Ebb & Flow 71 River Rd., Faber. “Golden Hours,” an exhibit of recent photographs by Jack Taggart.

Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Dean Dass: Venus and the Moon,” featuring atmospheric landscape paintings as well as stylized works of abstracted shapes and heavily worked surfaces.

Over the Moon Bookstore 2025 Library Ave., Crozet. “Natural Light,” a show of oil and acrylic paintings by John Carr Russell. Opens December 7.

Piedmont Virginia Community College 501 College Dr. PVCC Pottery Club’s annual sale. December 7, 9am-noon.

Shenandoah Valley Art Center 122 S. Wayne Ave., Waynesboro. A juried exhibition of modern folk art; “Iconoclasts,” featuring recent works on fabric by Annie Layne; and a  show of small works by SVAC member artists. Opens December 14, 5-7pm.

Jerry O’Dell at Studio 453

Studio 453 1408 Crozet Ave. Artisan open studio with stained glass artist Jerry O’Dell. December 14, 1-4pm.

Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian-Universalist 717 Rugby Rd. “Season of Light,” a community show. Opens December 1, noon.

Uplift Thrift Store 600 Concord Ave. An exhibit of works by painter Karen Mozee. Opens December 20, 4-6pm.

Vitae Spirits 715 Henry Ave. “A Pilgrim’s Journey to Spain, Scotland, and France,” featuring new oil paintings by Randy Baskerville.

Westminster Canterbury 250 Pantops Mountain Rd. “The Pleasure of Your Company,” an exhibit of paintings by Judith Ely. Opens December 2, 2:30-3:30pm.

Woodberry Forest School 898 Woodberry Forest Rd., Woodberry Forest. “Living in the Moment,” featuring drawings and paintings by Tatiana Yavorska-Antrobius. Reception November 14, 6:30-7:30pm.

First Fridays is a monthly art event featuring exhibit openings at many area art galleries and exhibition venues. Several spaces offer receptions. To list an exhibit, email arts@c-ville.com.

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Building happiness: Sculptor Mark Cline offers a double take through roadside attractions

Artist Mark Cline is known for his eye-catching, large-scale foam and fiberglass sculptures that are installed in unexpected places. He and his apprentice, Brently Hilliard, will be celebrated at the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Showcase, along with 14 other master/apprentice pairs on May 5 at James Monroe’s Highland. Photo by Pat Jarrett/Virginia Humanities

If you’ve seen a parade of 8-foot-tall ants climbing the side of a building, a life-sized foam replica of Stonehenge, or a T-Rex lunging through the trees with a Union soldier in its mouth, then you know the work of Mark Cline.

Dubbed “Virginia’s Roadside Attraction King” by Atlas Obscura, Cline has spent decades building foam and fiberglass sculptures, many inspired by monster and science-fiction movies. He’s got thousands of works at truck stops, amusement parks, restaurants, and other unexpected sites in the commonwealth and around the country.

Despite his relative fame as an artist, the Waynesboro native doesn’t seek accolades. “One time NPR asked me, ‘How do you want to be remembered? Give us three words.’ And I said, ‘A good man.’ They were expecting ‘a sculptor’ or ‘an entertainer,’ but none of that’s important. It’s really not important,” he says.

What matters to Cline is knowing that every project created in his studio in Natural Bridge, Virginia, entertains the people who see it. Whether he’s built a giant octopus eating a boat in a lake or installed Spiderman scaling down the outside of an old building, his projects mean something.

“[Seeing these sculptures] gives people a chance to smile. It gives them a chance to laugh, and laughter has been proven to heal people,” he says. “I had a conversation with my daughter earlier today saying, ‘Honey, if you can find something that you go into in your life that helps people, then you have found your place in heaven.’ Because that’s where heaven is. It’s a place that’s above poverty. It’s above hate. It’s above pettiness. It’s all about healing, and you’ve got to do it through whatever talents you have.”

You could call it divine intervention that Cline became a sculptor at all. He describes being 19 years old, “jobless, penniless, and fresh out of high school with no immediate or long-range plans.” One day, sitting on a park bench and feeling frustrated, he asked himself what he wanted out of life. As he wrote in his journal, he realized he wanted happiness—and the only way he would find it was by helping others.

He hitchhiked to Waynesboro, went to the employment office, and asked for a job. “They said, ‘We don’t have anything.’ I said, ‘Well, okay.’ I turned around and was getting ready to walk out the door—I had my hand on the doorknob—and the lady says, ‘We have something.’ I said, ‘I’ll take it.’”

The job was with Red Mill Manufacturing, a plant where they made figurines out of resin mixed with pecan shell flour. After work one day, a co-worker showed Cline how to make a mold of his hand. It was a revelation. “I said, ‘I can make all kinds of stuff out of this.’ He said, ‘You sure can, Mark. Here’s a five-gallon bucket. Go home and play with it.’”

That fortuitous connection gave Cline an outlet for the overactive imagination he’d embraced as a child, back when he built inventive props for school plays and pulled practical jokes like slicing off a fake hand in art class. The adult version of his creative streak became sculpting with fiberglass.

He taught himself how to do it, since “there was nobody out there to show me how it was done.” As a result, he developed his own technique—and for now he’s the only one in the world who sculpts the way he does.

As part of the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program at Virginia Humanities, which pairs master artists with vetted apprentices, Cline is passing on his creative approach for the very first time. He’s begun teaching and mentoring Brently Hilliard in fiberglass sculpture. Through the process of mutual discovery, he hopes to transmit the aspects of the craft that matter most to him.

“I could teach anybody how to be a sculptor,” Cline says, “but it’s no good unless you’re using your talents for something good. So ultimately I would like to see [Hilliard] use whatever I teach him to help others and inspire them in some way.”

Being an artist isn’t easy, he says. The work itself requires a willingness to suffer. “I lost my first wife over it. I had two major fires. I came so close to going bankrupt, one time I was on the courthouse steps.” But he welcomes the failures as well as triumphs “because that’s where you learn.”

Turns out the young man sitting on that park bench had it right. “Twenty-four hours a day on this planet, someone is being entertained by something that I’ve built, something that came out of me, something that I created,” he says. “My goal was to create happiness, and that’s exactly what this stuff does.”

Cline and his apprentice, Brently Hilliard, will be celebrated at the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Showcase, along with 14 other master/apprentice pairs on May 5 at James Monroe’s Highland.

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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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Restorative justice: Vanessa German’s art celebrates black lives

“There’s an incredible well of creativity that it takes to endure your humanity when it feels like you’re not in the right skin.” Vanessa German in Avery Court, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, 2016. Photo: Allen Phillips / Wadsworth Atheneum.

Vanessa German grew up in Los Angeles in a creative household, wearing clothes her artist mother made, writing stories, and crafting creations from the scrap materials her mom laid out on the dining room table for her and her siblings.

“We were makers as a way of life,” says German, the 2018 recipient of the $200,000 Don Tyson Prize, which recognizes “significant achievements in the field of American art.”

“My earliest memories of joy and knowing and understanding a sense of euphoria in being alive was through making things—the joy of gluing lace to cardboard and realizing I could make a separate reality in a story different than what existed in living reality. That is the way we came to know ourselves.”

She speaks on the phone from an artist residency in Mexico, where she is preparing a new body of work for a solo show, opening in Los Angeles in March. This new work is her special baby, she says, because it will be installed in the city “where I came to love the feeling of making art, the process of being in materials—being in a relationship with them and activating that relationship with intention.”

The as-yet-untitled new work is a series of sculptures and wall works constructed inside the frames of tennis rackets. “There is a point of classical mechanics,” German says, “that talks about the moment of inertia, the torque that it takes to bring something back to center.” The tennis rackets represent her experience of growing up black in L.A. “when hip-hop became hip-hop and AIDS became AIDS,” she says. Like her previous work, it reckons with mortality. But it also explores what it meant “to be alive in a culture of celebrity,” she says, in which Leonardo DiCaprio and other child stars were among her classmates and she learned to play tennis in Compton where Venus and Serena Williams practiced.

It’s about “what it was to be black in that environment and creative and sort of wild…how you make yourself as a black person…and what that is to find your center, the force of motion.”

After her exhibition opens in Los Angeles, German will come to Charlottesville for a week-long residency at The Fralin Museum of Art at UVA, where her sculpture and sound installation, “sometimes.we.cannot.be.with.our.bodies,” opens this week.

She created this work, which premiered in 2017 at the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh—where she has lived since 2001 —in response to the “ongoing deaths” and unsolved murders of black women and girls in Pittsburgh.

“I think of it as an act of restorative justice, a healing ceremony by sight,” she says.

Some of the sculptures in the installation are heads without bodies, solemn faces, and closed eyes, adorned with headpieces made of found objects, from tree branches to ceramic figurines. Other sculptures are vivaciously dressed bodies without heads, their expressive fingers pointing, flipping the bird, or forming fists.

She found some of the materials that compose the sculptures in her neighborhood of Homewood—in the alleyway near her house, on the street, in dumpsters—and some items people left on her porch. Once, a person left an entire box of shoes—large, glittery, funny, and beautiful shoes, she says, that were likely used in a drag performance.

She is particularly moved by the lives of black transgender women, and notes the prevalence of violence against them. “There’s an incredible well of creativity that it takes to endure your humanity when it feels like you’re not in the right skin,” German says.

Vanessa German, American, b. 1976. “sometimes.we.cannot.be.with.our.bodies.”, 2017. Mixed-media installation. Image courtesy of the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA. Photographed by Tom Little.

“sometimes.we.cannot.be.with.our.bodies” can be read in two ways. The first is the experience of someone whose loved one has been murdered in the street and she cannot go to her because the body is cordoned off by police tape. The second is the interiority of trauma itself and the dissociation a person may experience from her own body in order to survive the experience.

“As a descendant of enslaved Africans,” German says, “the soul of my culture, the soul of my people, is you attend to a body in a very special way in the space they have died. The ways bodies are tended to in a Western capitalist, patriarchal culture contributes to the trauma.”

She recalls how the body of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, lay uncovered in the street. “This continued the horror, for his body to be treated like he wasn’t a person, like he wasn’t a boy just an hour before,” she says.

Yet there is something of triumph and celebration in her installation. With its vibrant colors and the sound of dance music and uplifting voices mixed among whispers, it is, German says, “a force that can galvanize the sense of terror and tragedy and simultaneously connect that tragedy with the beauty and miracle it was that our people lived and were whole, miraculous, stunning human beings.”

“sometimes.we.cannot.be.with.our.bodies” will be on view at The Fralin February 22-July 7. Vanessa German will be in residence at the museum March 25-29, and will give a public talk on March 28.

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Inner realities: Les Yeux du Monde reconnects the imaginary worlds of Ed Haddaway and Russ Warren

Ed Haddaway's "An Even Larger and More Important Animal" draws influence from his time spent studying in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Photo courtesy Les Yeux du Monde

Winter gray getting you down? Les Yeux du Monde offers a potent dose of Southwestern heat in the form of paintings by Russ Warren and sculptures by Ed Haddaway that will banish those February blues.

The two artists, who are native Texans, met as students at the University of New Mexico in 1971, where they forged a friendship based on similar experiences and outlooks. Rejecting the abstraction then in vogue, they hankered instead for art that, as Warren puts it, showed the “touch of man.” Following graduation, Haddaway remained in Albuquerque. Warren moved east and the two lost touch. After a painting career that included teaching at Davidson College in North Carolina, Warren married Les Yeux du Monde director Lyn Warren, and settled in Charlottesville. Warren and Haddaway reconnected a couple of years ago, and realized that despite being separated by time and distance, they had been pursuing remarkably similar tracks all along.

“I chose ‘Surrealities’ as the title,” says Lyn Warren. “Because both Russ and Ed are interested in depicting imaginary worlds that evoke deeper truths. They value chance, humor, dream, and inner realities over external ones, and in similar fashion to the original surrealists of the 1920s, they favor the irrational over the solely rational, opting for a magical, dream-like, or humorous alternative.”

The surrealists were reacting to World War I and the instability and turmoil that followed. Finding their reality untenable, they rejected it, turning inward to their subconscious for inspiration. Warren and Haddaway came of age in a similarly chaotic time, at the height of the Vietnam War. Their work also rejects reality even as it retains a profound connection to its Southwestern surroundings.

Haddaway resists having his work labeled as “childlike.” It’s a tall order, given the bright colors, fanciful creatures, exuberant gumbo of shapes and underlying humor that permeates the work. But for Haddaway they are the creatures and objects that inhabit his imagination and visit his dreams. Thinking of them within the context of New Mexico, one can begin to see associations. In Native American mythology it wouldn’t be unusual for a man to be in conversation with a wolf as in “Meeting Mr. Wolf,” or for something like “An Even Larger and More Important Animal” to exist. The hand festooning the animal’s tail is both an ancient symbol and a humorous salute to the viewer.

In Haddaway’s larger works, the scale and color command attention, but he is able to sustain the interest in smaller works like “Click Clack Moon Metaphor” and “Wee House in the Forest.” A series of oxidized pieces, which seem made from organic matter, strike a subtler note. Haddaway’s monotypes are really appealing with their sophisticated palette and commanding, almost brutish gestures. The abbreviated images he produces are witty, edgily charming, and, yes, evoke Picasso.

Russ Warren, “Still Life with Curtains, 2018.” Image courtesy Les Yeux du Monde

You can tell that Warren revels in painting. The richness of the color, the texture, the energy, all convey a marked sensuality. Warren uses interactive acrylic paint to achieve a quality similar to the effect of oil, whisking the paint vigorously before he uses it. This creates bubbles that pop when applied, adding depth and texture to the work.

Warren’s recurring iconography has great personal meaning. There’s his dog Zeke, hit by a car shortly before his best friend was killed in a car crash that is both an homage to the adored pet and a stand-in for the friend. Guitars (Warren is a talented player) and other stringed instruments are represented, along with apples and half a watermelon.

Picasso and Cubism, in particular, are major influences. Warren is drawn to the fracturing of space that makes several views of an object visible at once, and the colorful flatness, simple shapes and use of dots that pervade his work are hallmarks of synthetic cubism. Take for instance “Still Life with Curtains,” a dynamic composition of abstract shapes with an arrangement of objects in front. The guitar, watermelon, and apples are all there, along with Zeke, curled up under the table. Here the dots not only add visual interest, they also veer into narrative, representing stars in the sky and watermelon seeds.

“The Ready Jester” reveals Warren’s eye for composition and color. The masks are Mexican, not African, with Day of the Dead connotations, and the turquoise, yellow, and orange evoke a southern border aesthetic. Horses and cows, a cat, and perhaps Zeke, are jumbled together to form a semblance of “Guernica” without the horror. On the left side, the background is a solid, smooth opaque, on the right, Warren introduces red and allows the brushstrokes to show.

A welcome seasonal respite full of joyful, eye-popping work, “Surrealities” also comes with a delightful backstory that speaks to the endurance of friendship and the power of personal convictions.

“Surrealities: The Art of Ed Haddaway and Russ Warren” is on view at Les Yeux du Monde through March 10.