Did First Friday sneak up on you guys the way it snuck up on us this month? Because whoa. I am so late posting this. And of course, the month I take forever to get started on this post is the month that it seems every gallery in Richmond has a First Friday exhibit happening. Sorry I haven't given you guys much time to prepare, but if it's any consolation, there is sooooo much to see in RVA tonight. Check it out:
Ghostprint Gallery: The Scientific Method
The Secret of Ophiuchus and Serpens, mixed media on wood panel, 60 x 48 in.
“Working in this scale had to involve my whole body… I had to wrestle with the paintings, like I wrestle with the questions they’re trying to take up.” - Josh George
Josh George’s imagination takes a darker turn in The Scientific Method, as he explores some of the more sinister aspects of our times. He represents figuratively and with his dry wit topics such as organ harvesting and who holds power over our lives. The scope of these subjects made working large inevitable. Using his signature collage/painting technique, George builds up a dynamic surface texture which leads the viewer to wonder what lies beneath the surface – the medium reveals/conceals the message. Conceptually and representationally, this is powerful and thought-provoking work. Josh George shows regularly in Italy, New York and his birth place, Kansas City. He lectures at The Art Department (where he is also Studio Lead) and Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, as well as Pratt Institute and Accademia di Arte di Brescia, Italy.
The First Friday Opening Reception for The Scientific Method will take place on Friday, September 7 from 6-9 PM at Ghostprint Gallery, located at 220 W. Broad St. The exhibit will remain on display through November 2.
Gallery 5: &@$#! An Exhibition Of Comic Art
&@$#! An Exhibition of Comic Artists highlights the work of an under-appreciated artistic field. In an environment that is permeated with ads and posters for cinematic adaptations of comics, an equal amount of representation for the comic’s originators are rarely seen. The aim of &@$#! is to introduce the craft of the comic creator through the display of original pencil & ink drawings and their “fine art” paintings & illustrations. Audience members ranging from fans of comics to visual & performing arts supporters will be amazed and delighted to erode preconceived notions of what it means to be a comic artist. Their content is not solely driven by spandex wearing heroes and heroines, but to tell a story like the storytellers before them that both delight and educate.
Featured Vendors:
Velocity Comics
AdHouse Books
Out of Step Arts
Confirmed Out of Town Guest Artists:
Reilly Brown, Fred Chao, Toby Cypress, Farel Dalrymple, Logan Faerber, Dustin Harbin, John Jennings, Andrew McLean, Paul Maybury, Tom Manning, Greg Ruth, Ben Towle, Alex Ziritt
Confirmed Locals:
Jim Callahan, Jared Cullum, Matt Deans, Mark Delboy, Meg Gandy, Rawn Gandy, Mark Leutke, Julia Scott, Rob Ullman, Spencer Hansen, Anne-Marie Wonder, Oura Sananikone
Also on the bill for the evening will be a musical performance featuring a showcase of bands that are part of local label the Subterranea Collective, including Houdan The Mystic, Brother Wolf, Way Shape Or Form, and Cheyenne. There will also be an outdoor street jam featuring DJs, fire spinners, acrobatics, and other circus-type fun, presented by the Party Liberation Front.
The First Friday Opening Reception for &@$#! An Exhibition of Comic Artists will take place on Friday, September 7, from 7-11 PM at Gallery 5, located at 200 W. Marshall St. The exhibit will remain on display through Saturday, September 29.
Quirk Gallery: Andras Bality, Aggie Zed, Gretchen Schermerhorn
Quirk Gallery presents the premiere of three new shows: Interiors, paintings by Andras Bality in the Main Gallery; paintings by Aggie Zed on the Shop Wall; and paintings by Gretchen Schermerhorn in the Vault. The First Friday Opening Reception for all three of these exhibits will take place on Friday, September 7 from 5-9 PM at Quirk Gallery, located at 311 W. Broad St. The Andras Bality exhibit will remain on display through October 26; the other two exhibits will remain on display through September 28.
Visual Arts Studio: The Golden Spiral/Synesthesia
Visual Arts Studio presents The Golden Spiral, new fantasy-esque graphic art and photography by Susan Hribernik.
The goal of these particular images is to push the envelope and strike the imagination to a fantasy world. With names like Candy, Tigereyes, and Ice Gravitator, these paintings are sure to be a must see!
Also featuring Synethesia, new wood block prints, hand carved reliefs, and sculptures by Norfolk artist Gia Labidi, on display in the Frank Hart Memorial Gallery.
The First Friday Opening Reception for The Golden Spiral and Synesthesia will take place on Friday, September 7 from 6-10 PM at Visual Arts Studio, located at 208 W. Broad St. The Golden Spiral will remain on display through October 26. Synesthesia will remain on display through December 21.
Candela Books & Gallery: Sunburn
Chris McCaw, Sunburned GSP #578(Puget Sound, WA), 2012. 8"x10" unique gelatin silver paper negative
Sunburn, a collection of groundbreaking images from American photographer Chris McCaw, is titled quite literally. By constructing his own cameras – one camera weighing in at 125 pounds and large enough that it needs to be mounted on a garden cart – and exposing directly onto large expired gelatin silver papers for extended exposures, from several hours up to 24 hours, McCaw manages to coax highly controlled and delicate depictions of primeval landscapes and seascapes while at the same time allowing the sun, throughout its trajectory, to graphically sear its path across the surface of his prints, often cutting completely through the prints when the sun is at its strongest points.
McCaw has taken this notion of simultaneous creation / destruction and harnessed the resulting tension, working with the unpredictable process so elegantly that he manages a polished and highly crafted style but one which remains dependent upon the brute and visceral contribution of chance and light and the spin of the earth. And because he works directly with paper negatives, which are solarized by the prolonged exposures, each resulting image is unique, less like a photograph and more a three-dimensional object rendered using the sun as a reductive tool.
A significant aspect of what McCaw has done with this body of work is to create an intellectual bridge back to a time when astronomy was first being explored, when mystery was commonplace and it seemed primally essential to find our place in the greater cosmos. The message that McCaw has rendered here so beautifully is a fragile one, where the flattened dimensions we have come to expect from photography have been torn, revealing a fresh photographic understanding of energy which ignites an alchemical transformation of the traditional landscape.
The First Friday Opening Reception for Sunburn will take place on Friday, September 7 from 5-9 PM at Candela Books & Gallery, located at 214 W. Broad St. The exhibit will remain on display through October 27. The reception doubles as a release party for McCaw's book, Sunburn, which is being released by Candela Books. For more info, click here.
1708 Gallery: Crest
Amy Chan, Hearts In Space 3
1708 Gallery is pleased to present Crest. Curated by Emily Smith, Executive Director of 1708, Crest features work by Amy Chan, Leigh Cole, Jessica Kain, Melanie McLain, Alina Tenser, Hannah Walsh, and Naoko Wowsugi. Working across multiple mediums, these seven artists are connected by interests in surface and touch, nature and the body, and questions of the constructed versus the innate.
The artists in Crest seem specifically interested in touch as found in varying types of impression. We consider mimicry and impersonation to be “doing” an impression. Experiences that impact the context in which they occur “leave” or “make” an impression. When one is misled or confused, they were “under the impression.” All of these different forms of impression intertwine in the work of the seven artists in Crest.
Some works cop forms and symbols from other places, representing them in unfamiliar configurations (Chan and McLain); others explore the literal presence, absence and traces of objects (Wowsugi and Kain); pageantry, presentation and display mark the work of Cole as well as Walsh, who shares with Tenser a preoccupation with the interplay between concealment and revelation.
Fortunately, it’s also much more complicated than that, as these artists’ interests merge and diverge across different forms. Idiosyncratic yet strangely familiar, the works in Crest pose questions relating to environment, communication, memory, and embodiment. These artists sweep you off your feet and take the rug out from under you, all to remind you where you are.
The First Friday Opening Reception for Crest will take place on Friday September 7 from 5-9 PM at 1708 Gallery, located at 319 W. Broad St. The exhibit will remain on display through October 6. For more info on the individual artists including in this exhibition, click here.
1708 Gallery Satellite Exhibition At Linden Row Inn: New Faces 2012
Colleen Billing, Untitled 2 (from the Beauty Apothecary series), 2012
New Faces 2012, 1708 Gallery's latest satellite exhibition at Richmond's historic Linden Row Inn, features artists that are all students or recent graduates of Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts. Exhibiting artists include Colleen Billing, Hilliary Gabryel, Jennifer Guillen, Elizabeth Guzman, Josie Justice, Michael Muelhaupt, Rachael Starbuck, Mark Strandquist, Breonca Trofort and Egbert Vongmalaithong.
Curated by artist and 1708 Gallery Board Member Amie Oliver, New Faces 2012 features a glimpse of some of the fresh-faced talent enrolled in the BFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University. The media on view varies from photography to drawing, painting to sculpture, video and prints, but each artist's vision and enthusiasm for concepts, materials and process promises to enlighten.
The First Friday Opening Reception for New Faces 2012, a satellite exhibition curated by 1708 Gallery, will take place Friday, September 7 from 5-9 PM at the Linden Row Inn, located at 100 E. Franklin St. The exhibit will remain on display through December. For more info on the artists appearing in this exhibit, click here.
Books, Bikes, And Beyond: Team Eight
Books Bikes And Beyond will be hosting a Team Eight Poster Show for the month of September. A variety of screen printed show posters, illustrated and printed by Team Eight, will be available at the shop and include work for Of Montreal, Steve Earle, Jeff The Brotherhood, Black Dice, Zola Jesus, Flogging Molly, and a dozen others.
The First Friday Opening Reception for the Team Eight Poster Show will take place on Friday September 7 beginning at 7 PM at Books Bikes And Beyond Thrift Store, located at 7 W. Broad St. The exhibit will remain on display through the month of September.
The Gallery At UNOS: Memories Past And Future
The Gallery At UNOS presents Memories Past And Future, featuring works by Linda C. Hollett-Bazouzi.
Linda C. Hollett-Bazouzi paints en plein air, recreating the feelings around her into colors. Linda often paints rapidly, 12 hours straight, to perfectly capture the moment's lighting and space. She is drawn to areas that are in a state of flux, creating a sense of urgency in her work which is fueled by changing light, weather, and wind.
The First Friday Opening Reception for Memories Past And Future takes place on Friday September 7 from 5-7:30 PM at The Gallery At UNOS, located at 700 N. 4th St. The exhibit will remain on display through October 27.
Library Of Virginia: Spirit Of Virginia--Photographs From The 1939 World's Fair
See photographs of Virginia scenes that were displayed in the Virginia Room at the 1939 World's Fair. The photographs provided an "infomercial" for the state, promoting it as a place not just of historic shrines and natural beauty, but as one of scientific, artistic, and intellectual sophistication, a modern state of concrete highways, world-class museums, and business-friendly public policies.
The First Friday program features Depression-era music and light refreshments in the main lobby of the The Library Of Virginia, located at 800 E. Broad St., from 5:30-6:30 PM, followed by the opening of the exhibition in the UR Downtown exhibition gallery with gallery talk by exhibition curator Hayley Harrington at 7:00 PM.
Art6: Works By Elie Ellis
Art6 presents new works by artist Elie Ellis and friends (including Rebecca D'Angelo, Laura Ashley Floyd, Gwenyth Gaba, Mitzi Humphrey, Stephfanie Hunter, Zack Johnson, Jillian Leigh, Jenifer Ellis Logan, Nathan Motley, Georgia Myers, Henrietta Near, Jay Paul and Paul Teeples). The First Friday Opening Reception will take place on Friday, September 7 from 5-9 PM at Art6, located at 6 E. Broad St. The event will feature a musical performance by My Son The Doctor and an ice cream social with refreshments provided by Ice Cream Connection. The exhibit will remain on display through September 30.
ADA Gallery: Ab Fab/Circus Dances
Eric Sall
ADA Gallery presents two new shows: Ab Fab and Circus Dances. Ab Fab features works by Eric Sall, Valerie Molnar, Michael Brown, Alex Kvares and Tom Condon. Circus Dances features works by Yann Leto.
Yann Leto
Yann Leto’s paintings have a knack for providing difficulty for the viewer. He has a certain obscene repulsion and attraction with the horrors of consumer culture, politics, the ultra-violence of the mass media, etc. It seems like the artist is making a statement regarding the state of humanity in the 21st Century. However, if we place leto’s work in a wider context, it takes on a different resonance. His fascination with the mass media and it’s societal spectacle has become a theoretical gadget, if not a readymade. It seems like his strategy is to connect with the viewer by loading the canvas with figures of distinct accessibility, from Disney characters to popular media images of celebrities seen in newspapers, t.v. and magazines - something every media loaded human being has been exposed to.But on closer inspection they don’t call for any desire to build meaning. What leto is interested in is to dismantle the established codes of picturemaking. His strategies are performed on more formal levels, bordering on a farcical kind of conceptualism that nonetheless bludgeoned the conventions of painting to the point of ridicule. In short, leto is only interested in painting and yet he gives you a bad conscience afterwards.”
The First Friday Opening Reception for Ab Fab and Circus Dances will take place on Friday, September 7 from 7-9 PM at ADA Gallery, located at 228 W. Broad St. Both exhibits will remain on display through October 14.
Rumors: Friends In Low Places
Friends are the foundation for my creations... thank you all for inspiration. --Jenn Rockwell
Rumors presents Friends In Low Places, a collection of paintings by Jenn Rockwell. The First Friday Opening Reception takes place from 6-8 PM at Rumors Boutique, located at 723 W. Broad St. The exhibit will remain on display through the end of September.
Reynolds Gallery: New Drawings/Accelerator/Boulder Field
Reynolds Gallery presents three new exhibits: New Drawings, by Nancy Blum; Accelerator, by Ross Caudill; and Boulder Field, an installation of woven bamboo sculptures by Stephen Talasnik.
Ross Caudill’s intuitive and organic sculptures reference the structures of chemical reactions and patterns of biological growth. The artist consciously investigates the correlation between structural engineering, design, and dimensional representation. Caudill earned his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University.
The First Friday Opening Reception for all three exhibits will take place on Friday September 7 from 7-9 PM at Reynolds Gallery, located at 1514 W. Main St. In addition to the reception, artist Nancy Blum will also be giving a gallery talk at Reynolds Gallery on Saturday September 8, beginning at 1 PM. All three exhibits will remain on display through October 26.
Red Door Gallery: Sycamore Musings
Christopher Stephens, Spring Looking Up 2, 5’ x 5’, oil on canvas
Sycamore Musings features Christopher Stephens' latest oil paintings of the Shenandoah Valley.
Christopher Stephens uses bold colors and brushstrokes to portray the lasting beauty of the valley through its seasonal transformations. This exhibit focuses on the mystery of the mighty sycamore tree.
The First Friday Opening Reception for Sycamore Musings will take place Friday, September 7 from 6-9 PM at Red Door Gallery, located at 1607 W. Main St. The exhibit will remain on display through October 27.
Main Art Gallery: Abstract Works/Substructure
Main Art Gallery presents Abstract Works, featuring paintings and drawings by Charles Magistro.
Charles Magistro has been exhibiting work for over 35 years and has the honor of having his work included in numerous private, corporate and museum collections: most notably both the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Brooklyn Museum. He currently teaches at William Paterson University of New Jersey. He was also recently included in “Olympic Fine Arts 2012 (London)” in the London Museum and Received Gold Medal for Fine Arts, Abstract, Oil on canvas 60” X 40”, title “The Unity of People”, from the Organization Committee for the Olympic Fine Arts.
Main Art X Gallery, their outdoor showcase, features Substructure, by Bradly Gay.
The piece is a representation of the unforeseen substructure that inherently connects all living things to each other on this planet. The symbol for Argon (Ar) has been used because we all have been breathing the same argon molecules since our first breath and will continue till the end of time... --Bradly Gay
The First Friday Opening Reception for Abstract Works and Substructure will take place on Friday September 7 from 7-9 PM at Main Art Gallery, located at 1537 W. Main St. Abstract Works will remain on display through October 26. Substructure will remain on display through November.
Studio Two Three: Thank You For Being A Friend
Studio Two Three presents Thank You For Being A Friend, featuring wonderful work by Studio Two Three artists and friends, and the musical stylings of the Golden Girls theme song, on repeat, for two hours [are they serious about the soundtrack? We don't know! Show up and find out -ed].
The First Friday Opening Reception for Thank You For Being A Friend will take place on Friday September 7 from 7-9 PM at Studio Two Three, located at 1617 W. Main St. The exhibition will remain on display through the month of September.
Anderson Art Gallery: Early Abstractions/That Time
VCU's Anderson Art Gallery presents two new shows: Judith Godwin's Early Abstractions and Arlene Schechet's That Time.
In the early 1950s, Judith Godwin began removing representational elements from her paintings in favor of abstract approaches. She continued to push the burgeoning abstraction in her work and, over the next decade, her imagery evolved into powerful nonobjective compositions. Even now, at this stage in her long career, Godwin is still reinventing the language of abstract painting in her studio.
After graduation from RPI in 1952, Godwin moved to New York City in 1953, during a period of major growth in post-war American art. She attended the Art Students League and studied with noted artists Will Barnet, Harry Sternberg, and Vaclav Vytlacil, as well as at Hans Hofmann’s schools in New York and Provincetown. As a young artist, she quickly immersed herself in the city, befriended other artists and art dealers, and eventually began to exhibit her paintings and establish her reputation. She achieved considerable success, exhibiting her works at the Stable Gallery and becoming the youngest woman ever to show at Betty Parsons. Godwin’s work has since been featured in numerous group shows and solo exhibitions, and is represented in many private and public collections, including those of the VMFA and the Anderson Gallery. Among her various awards, she received an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from VCU in 1989.
Featuring 25 paintings produced in the 1950s and 60s, Judith Godwin: Early Abstractions offers an in-depth exploration of a critical period in the artist’s development. The muscular brushwork and aggressive line for which Godwin is known are evident in even the earliest painting included here, created in 1950 before the artist had left her home state of Virginia for New York City. A subsequent group of paintings, characterized by heightened color and thick impasto, reflect her time as a student of Hans Hofmann. The exhibition demonstrates how, later in the decade, Godwin’s brushwork became considerably looser as she experimented with pours and stains in large-scale canvases, balancing painterly spontaneity with formal structure. These works and those that followed through the mid-1960s reveal a robust physical energy and intellectual rigor that Godwin retained in the years ahead, as she continued to develop her visual vocabulary.
Featuring nine sculptures and two cast-paper pieces, Shechet’s exhibition offers an up-to-the-minute look at her iconoclastic approach to ceramics, which she began using as her primary medium six years ago. From the start, Shechet has favored improvisational methods and a trial-and-error process over methodical and technical facility. At once comically awkward and elegantly poised, her paradoxical forms teeter, lean, bulge, torque, and reach in multiple directions at once, defying their own weight. “In fact, often things do collapse or fall over, and many don’t make it, but I love working on that precarious edge,” she says of her process. “For me, this has obvious emotional, psychological, and philosophical meaning.”
Shechet’s latest works combine a cartoonish demeanor with painterly effects. She constantly tests glazes and uses eccentric color combinations with an experimental disregard for traditional firing temperatures and techniques. The resulting variations in hue, texture, and opacity create complex, highly visceral surfaces. Similarly diverse, the bases she makes for her sculptures cover a wide range of shapes, sizes, and materials—from roughhewn timbers to painted kiln bricks and welded steel. Each is designed for a specific piece and integral to its completion. Once installed, the finished works populate the space of the exhibition like so many characters, suggestive of both the imperfections and possibilities implicit in the human condition.
The First Friday Opening Reception for Early Abstractions and That Time will take place on Friday September 7 from 5-7 PM at The Anderson Gallery at VCU School Of The Arts, located at 907 1/2 W. Franklin St. The exhibitions will remain on display through December 9.
Glave Kocen Gallery: The Big 5
Ed Trask, ruins of rebellion, 2012, painting acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
Glave Kocen Gallery presents The Big 5, an exhibition of five new works each by five artists to commemorate Glave Kocen's fifth anniversary. Steve Hedberg, Sheep Jones, Ed Trask, Mark Chatterley, and Rodger Bechtold have each created 5 works for the show.
The First Friday Opening Reception for The Big 5 will take place on Friday September 7 from 6-9 PM at Glave Kocen Gallery, located at 1620 W. Main St. The exhibition will remain on display through October 25.
Artemis Gallery: Ceramic Convolutions
Kay Heartwell Franz
Artemis Gallery presents Ceramic Convolutions, featuring new and up coming ceramic artists whose works reflect these philosophies of experimental non functional forms, shapes and texture and visionary execution.
The First Friday Opening Reception for Ceramic Convolutions will take place Friday September 7 at 5 PM at Artemis Gallery, located at 1601 W. Main St.
Decor Design Center Of Richmond: Paper Mosaic Portraits On Canvas
"My work reflects our society's obsession with beauty through advertising - and the endless images that bombard us daily. It is a purposeful intermix of images derived from advertising and thousands of incongruent pieces - images and text - from advertising that arrives through my mailbox. I appropriate these images and create them anew. Assembled like a mosaic; the paper tiles create an entirely new image - an eclectic and tactile portrait reworked in my imagination, utilizing materials that would otherwise go to waste." -Sandhi Schimmel Gold
Sandhi’s vision is “to perfectly join the disciplines of painting & mosaic to create a connected collection of representational images in segments of color", using items that would typically be thrown away.
Gold has participated in several group and solo exhibitions throughout the United States, and her work is included in many corporate and museum collections, for example the Ripley’s Museums and Scottsdale Center for the Arts.
The First Friday Opening Reception for Sandhi Schimmel Gold's Paper Mosaic Portraits On Canvas will take place Friday September 7 from 6-9 PM at Decor, located at 19 S. Belmont St. The exhibition will remain on display through October 2.
Visual Arts Center: Where We Meet
A 2010 graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University’s nationally renowned MFA program in Craft+Material Studies (Fiber), Andrea Donnelly weaves by hand monumental-scale images of the human figure, inkblots, and manipulated forms she calls bodyblots. Donnelly’s laborious process involves dying her fibers and hand painting patterns and images on the warp (perpendicular threads) before weaving the cloth. Created through a complex yet highly spontaneous process of weaving, staining, unweaving, and reweaving, Donnelly’s figurative works explore cloth’s intimate and universal material relationship with the body. She employs cloth as a literal reference to the human figure, drawing on sensory memories and the intimate connections we all have to cloth in its many domestic forms. Donnelly’s mural sized weavings depict abstracted self-portraits, paradoxically presenting the figure on a medium traditionally used to conceal it.
During the run of the exhibition, the public is encouraged to practice weaving on a loom outside the gallery to learn how Donnell’s work is made. The exhibition will also feature a hands-on education station for children, printed youth and adult gallery guides, and a short film documenting the artist’s labor-intensive weaving process. The adult gallery guide includes detailed photographs of the materials and techniques Donnelly incorporates into her work. The original film, created by fellow VCU grad Harrison Möenich, features Donnelly in her Fan District studio creating two weavings for this exhibition.
The First Friday Opening Reception for Where We Meet will take place Friday, September 7 from 6-9 PM at the Visual Arts Center Of Richmond, located at 1812 W. Main St. Donnelly will teach a beginner workshops on dye techniques and surface design applications October 6 and 13 and will deliver an artist’s talk on Thursday, Sept. 27, at 7:00 PM. Free, guided exhibition tours and educational tours for children are available Monday through Friday.
Page Bond Gallery: James River Project/ Zhin Tu Monoscape Series
The Page Bond Gallery presents two exhibits: Michael Kolster's James River Project, and Randy Toy's Zhin Tu Monoscape Series.
Michael Kolster is a contemporary photographer based in Maine who is interested in how we affect and in turn are shaped by the places we inhabit. In honor of the 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, he is currently exploring post-industrial rivers and their historical legacies. His River Project employs a variety of methods, including conventional black-and-white and color film, digital photographs, and video. Most recently, he has been producing ambrotypes, unique positive images on glass plates, with the wet-plate collodion process first invented in 1850. This selection of new ambrotypes and prints from digital scans of glass plates describe familiar sites along the James River; the contrast between contemporary subject matter and antique process is both startling and mesmerizing. Like the Daguerreotypes they replaced, ambrotypes yield a stunning level of detail combined with a narrow array of tones that offer “a rich, yet limited, range of information, much like a memory or a dream.” The effects of the silver-based process can indeed seem magical or other-wordly. Kolster welcomes the role of chance, which asserts itself through the inevitable variations that occur with each individually processed plate. Between subject and process “the physical correspondence is direct: water and “wetness” are the key elements to both,” Kolster says. He notes that the invention of the wet-plate process in 1850 coincided with an era when the industrialization and degradation of rivers was kicking into high gear. In this way, the invention of the chemical-heavy ambrotype process can be viewed as one product of the historic impulse to misuse our natural resources. In Kolster’s hands, it has become part of the effort to conserve, rather than exploit, our shared waterways and land.
Randy Toy, Tu Bore, 2012, Ink and dry pigments on paper, 7 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches
Randy Toy’s interdisciplinary practice encompasses printmaking, drawing, photography, painting, dimensional construction and gold leaf. It explores fundamental questions about self-identity, subconscious, and spirituality. The recurring themes of impermanence, time and interdependence derive from his interest in Eastern Philosophy. His new Zhin Tu-Monoscape series was inspired by “the wonder and mystery of an unexpected discovery.” Toy found that the imagery resulting from an unconscious mark-making exercise was inherently expressive and aesthetically powerful. The resulting landscapes asserted themselves “from the residue of fluid ink that had been squished, bled, and dragged across the paper’s surface,” suggesting rolling hills, mountains, clouds, rivers, and rainstorms. This evocative imagery references both the history of unconscious mark-making in Western art history and the self-assured brush strokes of traditional Chinese landscape painting. Process and execution are paramount in Toy’s work, and each object inspires a meditation on its making.
The First Friday Opening Reception for James River Project and Zhin Tu Monoscape Series will take place on Friday September 7 from 6:30-9 PM at Page Bond Gallery, located at 1625 W. Main St. Both exhibitions will remain on display through September 29.
Brazier Gallery: City Lights
Brazier Gallery presents an exhibition by Canadian artist Mark Lague entitled City Lights. The First Friday Opening Reception for City Lights will take place Friday September 7 from 6-8 PM at Brazier Studio And Gallery, located at 1616 W. Main St. The exhibition will remain on display through October 2.
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Artists! Galleries! Would you like your future First Friday events covered in these monthly articles? We might hear about your event anyway, but why leave it to chance? Email us your press releases: andrew@rvamag.com.