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.
Morbid fascination fuels the exhibition “Subculture Shock: Death, Punk, & the Occult in Contemporary Art,” at Second Street Gallery in September. Courtesy of the artist
Brooklyn multimedia artist Tamara Santibañez, one of the seven featured in Second Street Gallery’s group show “Subculture Shock: Death, Punk, & the Occult in Contemporary Art,” was recently quoted in The New York Times about Latinx artists’ use of family history and heritage. She explained that though her art represents her interests in aggressive underground music, queer kink, and Mexican-American imagery, she doesn’t speak for everyone who identifies with those groups.
Santibañez makes a key point that’s transferable to the multifarious visions constituting “Subculture Shock.” Some Latinx artists regularly draw from a collective pool of symbols and images with “highly individualized interpretations,” and there’s a similar essence informing the SSG exhibition.
Despite common influences, the Second Street show provides an original take on inclusion, bridging gender, sexual orientation, and a diverse set of experiences. Enlightening by delving into the darkness, the exhibition liberates viewers to relive the subcultural jolt the creators experienced during their youth—likely considered deviant acts of self-discovery. Picture it: Lunch periods fixated on piles of Satanist-themed books in the middle school library, afternoons blocking out the adult world’s cowardly warnings with punk’s existential blasts of harmonic fury, and, enticed by ghostly mentors, staring contests with masterworks of their art world predecessors before eventually forging their own illuminating truths.
These varied distillations of those experiences still need to interact in a meaningful way, and thankfully, they do.
“Group shows are often a hodgepodge of artists just thrown together with no cohesive thought,” says Kristen Chiacchia, SSG’s executive director and chief curator. “I wanted to do a show where the artists are not only looking at the same themes and ideas, but one where the result is visually coherent. I purposefully chose art that looks like it goes together.”
Each artist’s personal iconography recalls aspects borrowed from punk’s multigenerational history, then remixed with other subcultural touchstones. Evie Falci’s pieces pull from punk’s recurrent fashion choice of metal studs and black pleather. The Brooklyn-based artist insists the geometric forms reflect her own symbolic order, and the resulting trio of designs feels like a strange confluence of indigenous beadwork with astrological or alchemical musings affixed delicately to the rough-and-ready outerwear of slam dancers.
Santibañez’s aforementioned influences are evident in sculptures bearing brightly-colored Latinx folk art traditions imposed on BDSM gear—a reflection of her own kink expression, but paraphernalia that has long become part of a traditional punk ensemble. She explores her fetishism further in “landscapes,” monochromatic paintings of leather bunched into magnified topographic shapes that embody desires and reflect the grim catechism of an exacting sexual subset. The three pieces create an interesting dialog with Falci’s works.
Continuing the BDSM and occult theme, Jessicka Addams’ contribution, “Childhood Telepathy,” an acrylic on watercolor paper, features a crying face in a cat-shaped, full-head mask commiserating with a similarly distressed disembodied cat head marked with a forehead pentagram. Perhaps best known as the singer of Jack Off Jill during the 1990s, the Los Angeles artist’s chosen subject and medium is imbued with the innocent freedom of color blossoming in pointillist rainbow tears, a vibrant treatment of an undisclosed trauma.
Out in the open, and unavoidable, is the human skull: a go-to emblem of punk logos and album art, an ominous icon of the occult, and the longstanding reminder of mortality. The skull image is a ghoulish refrain played throughout the show. You’ll find it smirking in the mixed-media on paper works from Brooklyn-based Peter Benedetti’s imaginatively tortured and disfigured demons (“This Is Not A Pipe”). It grins through New Yorker Paul Brainard’s graphite images in no less than three iterations of punk legends The Misfits’ skeletal mascot, the Crimson Ghost. Danish artist Frodo Mikkelsen’s paintings incorporate skulls as well, perhaps best realized in his silver-plated skull sculpture, a magical jewel crowned with tiny, detailed architecture.
Taking the concept to its ultimate conclusion, New Jersey artist Porkchop recasts Egyptian royalty, Catholic Marys, gnomes, and historical busts in the cold unifier of death. Repainting found sculptures in stark, smooth blacks, whites, and gold leaf, elicits an otherworldly ghoulishness. Details like his intimate alphabet of reimagined letters underlines the impenetrable nature of death while trading in cryptic mysticism. Porkchop’s altar of unlikely neighbors represents an unfamiliar hierarchy posed with newly ranked, sinister import.
Are these artists fixated with death or is it the byproduct of reveling in a subculture with a grim view of the world? “Subculture Shock” doesn’t give definite answers, but suggests there’s more empowerment, freedom, and fun to be had down in the underworld than what’s clowning in plain sight.
Karen Blair (“Blue Iris”) is one of five area artists exhibiting beside two works by abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell in Second Street Gallery’s “Lady Painters: Inspired by Joan Mitchell,” on view until July 19. [Second Street]
Three years after starting her tenure as Second Street Gallery’s executive director and chief curator, Kristen Chiacchia says she feels at home. For the next month, when she enters the gallery, among the works greeting her are a watercolor and oil painting by celebrated mid-century abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell. The untitled works from 1957 form the pièce de résistance in Second Street’s “Lady Painters: Inspired by Joan Mitchell” exhibition. Joining Mitchell in the show are five female artists from Virginia—Isabelle Abbot, Karen Blair, Janet Bruce, Molly Herman, and Priscilla Long Whitlock.
“I wanted to show that I’m taking a step forward and am doing things in Charlottesville and curatorially that I didn’t have the opportunity to do in New York—and that I’m still able to bring a Joan Mitchell into [Second Street],” Chiacchia says.
During her 14 years as director at Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art in New York, Chiacchia estimates that over 50 of Mitchell’s top-tier works came through the gallery. With this proximity to one of the 20th century’s premier abstract artists, Chiacchia developed a respect for Mitchell and her groundbreaking work. After an introduction to Abbot, Blair, Bruce, and Whitlock through Les Yeux du Monde, and meeting Herman while in New York, Chiacchia noticed a connection between Mitchell’s work and that of the five women in “Lady Painters.”
“These women have been inspired by Joan Mitchell throughout their career, but none have exhibited alongside her work,” says Chiacchia. “You can see the similarities in brushstroke and color.”
And there are even similarities in framing. Herman’s diptych “Montserrat Field” features the same frame that New York’s Robert Miller Gallery would often choose for one of the many Mitchell works that entered its doors. Herman refers to her work as an exploration of figurative measurement, rather than of figures themselves. She says she feels “flattered” to be associated with Mitchell.
“My work is about a connection to flesh and the body,” Herman says. “Even standing in front of a painting is a relationship. It’s a reflection, or you dive into it.”
Dive into the gallery after a Saturday morning at the farmers’ market, as Chiacchia suggests, and the connection between the exhibition’s vibrant palate and that of early summer’s bounty becomes undeniable. Chiacchia speaks of the importance of the color blue to Mitchell, and indeed, the pieces flanking Mitchell’s two “Untitled” works celebrate the cool color.
On the gallery’s back wall is Whitlock’s “High Water, Marks.” It’s an abstracted landscape that portrays a gestural, expansive scene that is a symphony of exacted mark- making.
Upon encountering her first Mitchell in Norfolk’s Chrysler Museum of Art, Whitlock says “it was love at first sight—the big slashes of paint, the energy behind her marks.” In preparation for the exhibition, Whitlock incorporated more mixed-media and looser mark-making in her work. “I love the expressive marks and energy that can be distilled into line; it’s jazzy, hopping, it’s music,” she says.
Karen Blair’s “Blue Iris” energetically conveys joy and excitement. Displaying her painting next to Mitchell’s watercolor made her realize how much of Mitchell’s aesthetic became part of her own.
“Abstract marks can convey an entire world,” Blair says. “As an artist, if you walk into a gallery, the thing that you’re looking for is whether or not the show is more than the sum of its parts,” says Blair. “The energy in [Second Street] knocks you off your feet. Kristen did that. Having a painting next to Joan Mitchell does that.”
Flanking a few of Blair’s works are those belonging to Abbot, who shares a studio with Blair. Abbot’s “The Beach in Summer” subtly nods to the color field aesthetic of Mark Rothko or Barnett Newman, whose work was concurrent to Mitchell’s abstractions. Abbot’s “Summer” is freer, though. It revels in repetitive brushstroke and explores variations in texture and line—perhaps akin to navigating beach towels on a crowded seashore.
On the gallery’s right wall, viewers encounter Bruce’s seven-by-four-and-a-half-foot “Charlottesville, August 12, 2017.” Awash in iron and gold hues, the painting overflows with collage-like figures finished with jagged, puzzle piecemealed edges that don’t quite fit together.
Bruce quotes Robert Motherwell—another of Mitchell’s contemporaries—in his “Elegies to the Spanish Republic”: “‘A terrible death happened that should not be forgot.’ It’s important to find expression for horror. Red is the color of blood, rage, organs, lipstick.”
Just behind “Charlottesville,” in the exhibition’s entrance, there is a phrase uttered by Mitchell during her 1988 retrospective at the San Francisco Museum of Art: “Not bad for a lady painter.”
“Mitchell called herself that sarcastically to show that she wasn’t just a lady painter,” says Chiacchia. “She was one of the most important American painters of the 20th century—not just female painters, but one of the most important painters. The opportunity we have to show her at Second Street and alongside women we know in our community…that’s something really special.”
Second Street Gallery’s “Lady Painters: Inspired by Joan Mitchell,” on view until July 19.
Our voices bounce back at us as we speak. I’m one street over from the Downtown Mall in Megan Read’s studio, and it, like her paintings, has an uncluttered spaciousness about it.
Older finished works line part of a wall, and paintings in progress are set up at various heights on another. But the rest of the space lies mostly bare. Shiny wooden floors gleam. Pristine brick walls rise. A kitchenette area in the far corner poses as if it were part of a brand-new model home where no one has or might ever dare to cook, eat, or sip.
As I lower the microphone level on my handheld recorder to a safer setting, it occurs to me that this is the most immaculate art studio I’ve ever seen in my life.
Read explains that she hasn’t been working here all that long, hence the emptiness. Still, her studio could be held up as exemplary for many, an endgame that’s defined the early part of 2019: The Year to Seriously Clean House. The popularity of Marie Kondo has spurred a zeitgeist for living a clutter-free life shared only with the bare essentials (or at least those that “spark joy,” as Kondo says), and reassessing the importance of the objects we bring into our homes.
For Read, a tidy space is imperative. She says that she gets overwhelmed easily and feels stressed when engaging with a heavy sensory load. When I ask what the inside of her house looks like, she recounts the large lot of stuff she has, but notes that it stays contained, with curios like bird bones and nests stored in their proper places alongside more functional belongings like glassware.
Her works reflect this intrinsic need for unobstructed surroundings, and are partially responsible for her return to creating after multiple, years-long periods away from making art. After nearly a decade of suffering from depression and avoiding most human contact, Read used painting as a way to cycle through her own mental difficulties and to connect with others, both in showing her work and finding like-minded artists online. The act of painting continues to provide solace.
“A lot of the things I’ve been painting are about making quiet spaces for me,” she says. “And that’s also part of the reason I started drawing in the first place—and then painting again. It’s a break from all of the chaos. It’s a time where I don’t feel like I’m supposed to do anything else. There isn’t stuff coming at me and I don’t worry that I’m not doing the right thing, which for someone who is anxious, is a nice feeling.”
That feeling of detached simplicity is captured within paintings that are equally undisturbed by any mess. But as opposed to her bright studio, many of her pieces are rooted in a chiaroscuro treatment where figures appear coolly lit, emerging from a depth of field concealed in darkness, a heavily shadowed world without end.
Megan Read in her studio, Sanjay Suchak
Read’s new works for the upcoming show “OBJECTify,” opening at Second Street Gallery on Friday, April 5, with veteran local artist Michael Fitts, further explores her penchant for female subjects with obscured faces who occupy sparse environments—almost always with a few carefully chosen possessions.
As in earlier works like “Becoming,” whichfeatured a woman blindfolded by an Adidas headband, and “Furling,” which depicted a female figure holding up a pair of Nike sneakers by their laces, these new paintings commingle touches reminiscent of Old World, romantic nudes crossed with slices of hyperrealist visions. The overall effect may be, at times, disarmingly photographic, but Read contends that achieving photorealism isn’t her concern.
Read constructs images in Photoshop, which then function as rough working models for her paintings. But she insists there are major differences between the staging that she creates in software and the finished pieces.
“It’s funny, there are people who will see my stuff and be like, ‘Oh my god, it’s so realistic!’ But I pick details to put in. I will put in a bunch of actual hairs on the head and more wrinkles on the hands and feet. Otherwise, I don’t really care,” she says.
Driven by an urge to recreate what she sees in her mind, she’s less concerned with any message that her paintings might contain, and motivated by a subconscious pull toward perfecting the natural grace of the figure’s position. While her newer works’ main female subject co-stars with a finch, and in one case, a peacock, there are also a few select possessions: a tapestry, an iPhone, and a pair of surprisingly sunny yellow shoes that Read says she has in five colors, noting that she owns all the footwear in her paintings.
Shoes have become an ongoing trope that Read consciously incorporates. The aforementioned Nikes appear in multiple works. She admits that purchase was aspirational, since it took her 10 years to start wearing them after first bringing them home, harboring a wish to be the kind of person who would wear the suede Sprint Sister model.
“Actually, when I started painting them, I got to the point in my life where I stopped worrying about what people think and decided that I can wear bright blue sneakers,” she says. “My feet are the only place where I wear bright colors. They just seem to be representative of the way you want to present yourself. I think the shoes people wear say a lot.”
So while she’s adamant that she doesn’t choose the objects in her paintings for any symbolic reason, there may be something to what she says about the possessions already conveying specific messages. It makes sense. As a society, we like our things to say something about who we are.
But on the whole, Read tries not to ruminate too much on the items that find their way into her works. She lets her energies guide the process.
“Usually by the end, I start having thoughts about why I chose to put things there in the first place. And some of the choices start to make more sense. I think that there are themes I see repeating themselves that I am certainly not sitting down and planning out, but they just keep happening.”
The elements that recur in her paintings include hidden female faces, articles of women’s clothing, birds, and technology. If there is an overarching theme, it is a conflict between who we are, who we want to be, and what we wish for ourselves. Read’s works envision an inner strength, resilience, and the potential of freedom, but also reveal weakness in the face of all that life demands. They demonstrate a comfort with our own bodies, but also uncover the threat of doubt and, perhaps, a weakness to hold on to those mere things—favorite shoes, the ubiquitous cellphone—that have also come to define us.
Michael Fitts in his studio. Photo: Sanjay Suchak
I’m really not sure how Michael Fitts can work like this.
His counterpart in the “OBJECTify” exhibition could probably park an SUV in her studio, but he paints in much closer quarters.
Fitts is partly to blame for his condition. An ever-growing collection of what is usually dismissed as junk—toy parts, game pieces, food wrappers, vintage oil cans, and 40-year-old drug store staples—monopolizes the room. These are the items that feature in his work. He crouches under a lamp, mere inches from the floor, hunched in a kneeling position that resembles religious prostration. His setup looks extremely uncomfortable. By nightfall, the studio is mostly dark, barring the penetrating spotlight focus of the work bulb, and increasingly restrictive thanks to the tenuous heaps of his amassed stuff.
The artifacts from his paintings peek out of the piles. They recall moments of a 1970s upbringing among dad’s hardware detritus, mom’s dress patterns, and after-school candy store splurges. You might think he would feel overwhelmed by the amount of accumulated clutter in his studio, and he admits that it’s started to encroach on the work area he’s carved out in the center of the room. Yet for all of the chaos, he’s got his own system of organization and he’s determined to hold on to the bulk of his stuff.
“Some of it I’ve let go. But over the years, I’ve started keeping it. I did a painting of a popcorn box once when I was getting started, and after I finished it, I threw the box away. Then I sold that painting and I wanted to do it again. So after that I just started keeping everything—unless it’s something like a melting chocolate bar that I can just buy again. I have everything that I’ve painted.”
Michael Fitts’ “McCall’s 4183,” 2019, oil on copper
His reasons for collecting what others might toss stems from a sincere hope that he will capture it later in his art. The works Fitts has planned for the Second Street show continue his fascination with recreating singular items on metal “canvases,” in this case copper—perhaps a link to his former life as a sign painter. Like Read, he tries not to overthink the process of what possessions he chooses to paint or their potential meaning.
His works are simple: one painting, one object. But they have effectively stirred emotional responses for years. They are depictions of things, yes, recognizable and perhaps mundane, but by no means devoid of deep emotive qualities. Fitts’ art nails down what might otherwise blow into the trees. He holds these disposable items up as emblems of a time when his future was untethered by responsibility, and his universe was packaged in the vibrant comfort of brands you could trust. He is a master of reproducing mid-to-late-20th-century artifacts with the far-reaching power of recalling our secret remembrances and cherished dreams of youth.
As Americans, that longing to own stuff —and the sentiments those things elicit—reveals a commercialism that tends to get tied to trademarks. When I mention that both he and his fellow “OBJECTify” artist often display brand names in their art, Fitts says he strove to paint more generic objects in the past. But he stopped thinking about the potential impact of trademarked corporate names and logos when he opted to follow a Pop Art aesthetic. It frees him to reframe whatever he fancies as a work of art without ascribing any secondary meaning. “I like to try to strip away as much narrative as I possibly can,” he says.
He’s also keenly aware that he’s not the first to appropriate consumer goods and that duplicating the artful packaging that covers them follows a Warhol-like tradition, perhaps best described by a friend calling him a “Pop Realist.”
Whereas Read’s hyperrealism and product placement are byproducts of a therapeutic painting process for calming her mind, Fitts is motivated by the act of copying his subject with machine-like accuracy—and without affecting the object of his interest by injecting his own interpretation of it. That goal is the consequence of a long art career that was never built upon his imagination. Years ago, he painted in an abstract style for a period, but for him, the less concrete compositions took considerably more effort.
“Abstract art is so much harder, because you’re trying to let something flow out of you, whereas I’m just painting a Q-Tip box. You don’t really need an artistic mind. The artistic mind part is concept.”
With paintings like “Skate,” “Box of Chocolates,” and “Potato Chips,” it’s nearly impossible to believe that Fitts doesn’t find the whole thing a bit funny. But the VCU graphic design school grad swears that he is completely genuine about what he does and expects to be taken seriously. And he definitely should be, as even if some of it is a bit of a laugh, Fitts’ works’ comic potency never belies ingenious artistic concepts and an exceptional capability for accuracy.
“I did a painting a couple of years ago of a Heinz ketchup packet that had been stomped on, with the ketchup splattered. People thought it was hilarious. And it was, but I don’t even know why. Other times, I’ve had people ask, ‘What made you think that you could do a Pond’s Cold Cream as a painting?’ And again, I don’t know. That’s the mystery. The rest of it is just execution,” he says.
Fitts’ “Skate,” 2019, oil on copper
“I’m not that creative,” Read says shrugging. It’s an odd self-assessment, but a cutting and introspective viewpoint she shares with how Fitts sees himself. It’s also another reason that pairing the two for the Second Street show makes sense beyond the skillful photographic accuracy they produce with their brushes.
Strangely, “OBJECTify” is the culmination of many real-life narrative threads that came to light when Read first hung her piece “Resistance/Resilience,” a painting of a nude woman dropping hay for a sheep.
“My wife and I used to walk every morning to get coffee at Mudhouse,” Fitts recalls. “We walked in there and saw Megan’s painting and I was like, ‘What the hell is this?!’ I hadn’t ever seen anyone in Charlottesville doing anything like she was doing. So new, unusual, and well-executed. I thought it could easily be at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.”
He reached out to her, and the two met. She recalls being ecstatic that she was going to be having a conversation with someone she considered a real artist. As it turned out, when Read was first learning to paint at 16—in the same building that houses her new studio—she saw Fitts’ art at Mudhouse and had her own epiphany: “Holy shit—that’s what I want to do!” she recalls thinking. “I feel like that’s exactly what should be made. I want to make exactly what he’s making.”
Clearly, Read’s artistic journey veered from Fitts’, but they are both capable of faultless execution and an uncanny ability to render stunning detail with brushstrokes.
Fitts recalls that Read was concerned about filling the walls for a show she was planning, and he offered to “take up some of the space.” Right around the same time, Second Street’s executive director and chief curator Kristen Chiacchia approached the artists about producing a joint exhibition at the nonprofit gallery. It was a serendipitous moment.
“It’s Second Street’s mission to bring the best contemporary art to central Virginia—and in this case, I didn’t have to search far,” says Chiacchia. “Charlottesville has two local artists working in the New Precisionist style of painting equal to what’s currently being shown in top galleries in New York.”
“Flowers Without Vessel,” by Megan Read, 2018, oil on linen.
And how do the artists expect their new works to be received? Undoubtedly, people will gasp at the trompe l’oeil realness that Read and Fitts serve. Yet they each hope viewers will freely give their paintings the meanings that they’ve left for them to convey on their behalf.
Read says she imagines that because of her paintings’ intentional emptiness, what does remain are reliable targets for accepting the emotional projection of any invested viewer. She cites a touching moment when a woman justified an urgent exit by noting that her male companion began welling up at “Resistance/Resilience.”
“I definitely don’t want to make people cry, but it makes me really happy that somebody had a moment,” Read says. “That’s really what I want: people to have a moment that’s meaningful for them.”
In Fitts’ estimation, his paintings’ lack of narrative leaves a wide berth for others to call back to their own childhood memories and hit a soft spot. He says that those endless opportunities for what each object might recall for viewers is his raison d’être.
Now his only concern is that his part of the show holds up to Read’s.
“I told Megan that I hope I can keep from embarrassing myself when I look at what she’s doing.” He considers how their work diverges: “Hers definitely has a dark, psychologically tortured feel,” Fitts says, pausing to chuckle, “whereas mine is like…oil can.”
But the things that capture our attention resonate in ways unimagined. Read and Fitts will likely be surprised when they discover the meanings viewers bestow on their latest paintings, strangers stepping closer to scrutinize their artistry, mentally taking possession of things that, once seen, immediately belong to all of us.
“TORN” at Second Street Gallery will be shown through January 18. Courtesy of the artist.
By CM Gorey
Photography rules our lives now. And unless you’re a staunch Luddite with something to prove, you’re a contributor and a consumer from first coffee cup through alarm-setting before bed. We have transitioned from the point-and-shoot, badly lit grease fests of 1980s homespun glossies to teeming libraries of filters swizzling images into preposterous concoctions: At essentially zero cost, we make ourselves years younger, abnormally wide-eyed and emitting suspect amounts of sparkles. Undermining the camera’s basic function of mirroring reality, we yield ever further to absorbing and reflecting more fantasy.
Yet given the unlimited potential for new visions, there’s a sameness to most of the imagery we swipe past. A cheap currency of storytelling dominates the images we see; it’s a totalitarian vogue insinuated by so-called influencers and perfect people we’ve never met.
In a world inundated with visuals, it’s an incredible feat that the fine art of photography persists. More implausible still, the work of Brooklyn-based husband-and-wife team WAXenVINE requires an in-person (yeah, real life) visit to appreciate it properly. Their show “TORN” at Second Street Gallery recasts the medium in a manner that shows a depth muted by the very best phone displays; its quality invites in-the-flesh meditation that is otherwise disguised to an unfair flatness when replicated by even good old print.
Photographer Scott Irvine and interdisciplinary artist Kim Meinelt share a singular artistic vision. Their multifaceted images recall early vintage photo portraiture, but the subjects commingle with skyward or taxonomic shots of fauna and flora in upended perspectives; the guts of simple machines recast them in daunting tangles; and inverted negatives find them under obscured, scratched treatments.
“TORN” deals primarily with the female figure and alternative views of beauty, which, according to the artists, aim to conjure an uneasy yet ethereal narrative. If the stratification of the pieces is successful, it’s because when we drill down beneath the gloss of the topmost layer, peer into the blur of intentional overexposure and wounded focus, we’re still met with mystery. Look and look some more. These people refuse to be seen.
It’s easy to assume a commentary on the objectification of femininity, given the women fogged out by bird feathers and muddied up by chandeliers. But like the physical composition of the works themselves, it goes deeper.
WAXenVINE’s photographs defy the expected benefits of sight by squelching the clarity associated with proximity. We’re so close but still can’t be completely sure what it is we’re looking at: Is that woman upset or in total bliss? In pain or ecstasy? And where is she?
The abstractions are ripe for interpretation: Generated in spontaneous reaction to calibrate the experience, our projected narratives serve to pound a stake in the rare islands of surety the artists have allotted for us. We know that’s a woman and that’s a tree, but that knowledge doesn’t reveal ambition and it never exposes unguarded emotion.
Looking over these pieces together in Second Street’s Dové Gallery, it’s apparent that many of the captured figures are complicit in the viewer’s ignorance. They are unable or unwilling to look back at us from their umbral warrens, and their lack of eyes —or in some instances, featureless faces—make the problem all the more convoluted for the viewer.
The titles of three-foot square works dominating two of the gallery walls acknowledge the female subjects beyond scrutiny. Landscapes meld with bodies, flesh becomes dust, which becomes flesh. In “Milka Torn,” the subject’s arms in a defensive self-hug hold back a forest of stars erupting from her chest, as a windswept wasteland tumultuously rolls in the distance. “Caitin Torn” catches either a woman’s final moments before dissolving into the earth, or the beginning of her revival in the desiccating greenery. New life or old death? This could be the underlying question that drives WAXenVINE.
One section containing 23 smaller pieces transforms into smaller square windows peering into a monochrome freakshow or an advent calendar from an asylum. “Pins + Needles” gives an unlucky lady the voodoo doll treatment, while “Blythe” loses the majority of her orifices to an implosion of botany; same goes for the pivot-face locked in the floral wheel of “Dandelion,” and for “Elizabeth,” whose profile has birthed bulbs, her graceful throat repurposed as a field from which the long stems grow. In the ruff of blooms of the darkened “Tara + Flower,” the motif is repeated in the cycle of life and the irrepressible profusion of beauty.
No less effective, other works such as “Tara Beads,” “Sylvie,” and “Markert Gold” ignite their black-and-white expanses with golden hues. By creating a richness of contour and replicating the trope of interconnectedness—woman as tree, branches as a gilded x-ray of veins and capillaries—the portraits carry the faintest traces of Klimt-style woman worship. The layers of each, in concert, bridge the scientific and the religious. We may not understand everything, but perhaps we know enough to believe what we see.
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.
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.
close up of funny sleepy pomeranian standing and panting on white background
Nonprofit
Gearharts Chocolates Summer Open House
Saturday, July 28
Tour the local chocolate purveyor’s production facility and get a taste of chocolates and other locally made treats. A portion of the day’s sales will benefit the CASPCA. Free, 11am-5pm. Gearharts Fine Chocolates, 243-B Ridge McIntire Rd. 972-9100.
Food & Drink
Brews with a View
Wednesday, July 25
Enjoy live music from Danczet and The Barons, along with great brews and an even better view of the city. 21-plus. $20, 6-10pm. Second Street Gallery, 115 Second St. SE. 977-7284.
Health & Wellness
PR for Public Radio 5K
Saturday, July 28
Run 3.1 miles along a flat cinder path at Darden Towe Park to benefit local NPR station WMRA…and maybe set a personal record in the process.$25-30, 6:45am. Darden Towe Park, 1445 Darden Towe Park Rd. runsignup.com/pr5k.
Family
Albemarle County Fair
Thursday, July 26, through Saturday, July 28
The annual Albemarle County Fair returns with entertainment for the whole family. Meet livestock, participate in a cornhole tournament, see entries in quilting and canning contests and more. $5, 4-9pm (Thursday), 10am-9pm (Fri./Sat.). 2050 James Monroe Pkwy. info@albemarlecountyfair.com.
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 June19, 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.
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.
