Hey everyone! It's almost February, and you know what that means--Groundhog Day is right around the corner! Yes, Groundhog Day, that random day in the exact middle of winter when people stalk a Pennsylvania-born rodent (part of a species also known as woodchucks or, um, whistle-pigs) at the crack of dawn to see how he reacts to his shadow. And then Bill Murray gets stuck in a time warp. Or something like that. Regardless, First Friday is actually the night before Groundhog Day this year, and unlike Bill Murray, you don't have a thousand years or so of perpetual repeats which you can keep living through until you get the day right. You've got to appreciate the First Friday of February 2013 while you have it, because once it's over, it's never coming back. Here are a whole bunch of things you can go see to make your one shot at First Friday a night to remember!
Ghostprint Gallery: Eroica
Eroica, an exhibition of new pen and ink drawings by local artist Benjamin Sack. will open for a reception with the artist on Thursday, January 31, from 6-8 PM, and will also be open on First Friday, February 1, from 6-9 PM, at Ghostprint Gallery, located at 220 W. Broad St. The exhibition will remain on display throughout the month of February.
Gallery 5: Works By Matthew Damian Ritchie
Gallery 5 presents the return of former Richmond artist Matthew Damian Ritchie, who now makes his home in Texas. "Matthew is most well known for his colorful bold paintings, full of movement with dreamy environments and childlike characters. This solo exhibition will feature multiple large scale paintings and installations."
In my work I mean to create an environment much like a child would. Within this world anything and everything could happen it is just dependent on one’s own imagination. --Matthew Damian Ritchie
This exhibition will open on First Friday, February 1, with a reception beginning at 7 PM, at Gallery 5, located at 200 W. Marshall St. The evening will include music by Houdan The Mystic, Cardinal Compass, Dave Watkins, and DJ Outsider, as well as exclusive beers from 3 Brothers Brewery. The exhibition will remain on display through March 30.
Quirk Gallery: Tin Foolery
Tin Foolery pieces are made from printed tin containers, copper building scraps, wire, and metal brads. Generally they range in size from 14 x 16 to 16 x 20 inches, though some stretch up to seven feet long. I am spellbound by animals: their colors, shapes, textures, beauty, humor. I love how, as its eyes and snout appear, a tin creature comes alive. --Barbara Iobst
Tin Foolery will go on display with a preview showing on Thursday, January 31 from 5-8 PM, followed by a First Friday opening reception on Friday, February 1 from 5-9 PM, at Quirk Gallery, located at 311 W. Broad St. The exhibit will remain on display through the month of February.
Visual Art Studio: Artistic Gifts
Gennara Moore, Thorns and All, 20"x20" framed mixed media
Visual Art Studio Gallery proudly announces the Opening Reception First Friday February 1, 2013 of the final installment of their 13th Annual Invitational and Open Call for Art Small Works Exhibition, Artistic Gifts.
Artistic Gifts encourages people to support their arts community by giving one-of-a-kind pieces handcrafted by local artists.
This mixed media group exhibition of artwork and artisan ware $395 and less has been evolving since November 2012. As pieces have sold, new items have gone on display. Now that the Open Call comes to a close January 2013, the shelves and walls are overflowing with items for you, your home/office or your very special Valentine. Many wall pieces, emboidery and small sculptures are less than $100 with small canvases, handpainted glassware, lots of prints and cards, ceramics, jewelry, T-shirts, purses and a handmade scarf are less than $50 and $25 by talented emerging and established artists who were invited or responded to our Open Call for Art. No artist has ever been turned away & there's never been a submission fee!
Opening for February and hung salon style are Northern Virginia Artists Pam Coulter, Bill Firestone, Gennara Moore (jpeg attached) , Anita Bucsay Damron (jpeg attached, 12"x12" mosaic $295) , "New to Richmond" Ozzie Blas and Texan Jim McHenry. More new work by Richmond Artists Terrie Powers (who also created our fabulous new mural), Joanna Lee, Redd Staples (jpeg attached) , Tony Custalow, Joel and Teresa Howard and Susan Lamson also opens. Continuing Richmond artists are Chris Semtner, Martha Anne Hart (tribute to owner's late mother,) Greg Lewis, T. McConville, Fred Weatherford, Susan Hribernik, Keith M. Ramsey, Jamie Phillips, Anne Hart Chay, Allen Jessee, Sally Valentine, John Crutchfield, Katherine Benner, Denise Bell (jpeg attached), Gia Labidi a! nd Dodie Ortland who's new work opened either in December 2012 or January 2013.
Artistic Gifts will open with a reception on First Friday, February 1, beginning at 6 PM, at Visual Art Studio, located at 208 W. Broad St. The exhibit will remain on display through February 13.
Virginia Center For Latin American Art: 45 New Drawings & 1 Moving Picture
Virginia Center For Latin American Art presents Forty-Five New Drawings And One Moving Picture (Regarding Influence + Cannibalism + Friendship), a mobile installation by Norberto Gomez Jr, which will be installed on the VACLAA bus for the next two months.
Gomez is an artist, writer, and musician. His topics of interest include, but are not limited to: skulls, the life, death & rebirth of time & space, Italo-cannibal-exploitation cinema, and music. He lives in Richmond, VA, where he continues to practice in the dark-arts.
Recent work includes: solo monthly bathroom paintings at Richmond’s Strange Matter, Dec. 2012-present, Winter Group Show at Gallery A, Richmond, Dec. 2012, facilitator and organizer of BYOB (Bring Your Own Beamer) international video-projection events in San Antonio, TX (with The Lullwood Art Group) & Richmond, VA (as part of 1708 Gallery’s InLight-Richmond), Oct. & Nov. 2012, and timesteps with Debra Barrera, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX, Nov. 2011.
This show is dedicated to the memory of friendship & influential introductions.
Forty-Five Drawings And One Moving Picture will open with a reception on First Friday, February 1, from 6-10 PM at the VACLAA bus, which will be parked at 401 W. Broad St. for the evening. The installation will be up and mobile for two months.
Art6: Art Attack
Art6 presents Art Attack, a multi-artist exhibition featuring works by Ethan Brown and Kevin Brown of the Pamunkey Reservation, Helene Ruiz (showing works from her Game Of Life series), Marcos Oro, and more. The exhibition will open with a reception from 6-10 PM on First Friday, February 1, at Art6, located at 6 E. Broad St., and will remain on display through Feb. 23.
Books Bikes And Beyond: 36 Skulls
Books Bikes And Beyond presents 36 Skulls, a selection of paintings by Noah Scalin from his 100 Painted Skulls Project. During 2012, Noah Scalin celebrated five years of maintaining his Skull-A-Day Project by painting 100 skulls on 4 x 4in (10.16 x 10.16 cm) wooden panels over the course of the year. This month, Books Bikes And Beyond will exhibit 36 of these panels.
36 Skulls will open with a reception on First Friday, February 1, beginning at 7 PM, at Books Bikes And Beyond, located at 7 W. Broad St. The exhibit will remain on display through February 28.
Studio 6: Open Studio
On First Friday, February 1, Todd Hale presents a display of recent work at Studio 6, located at 6 E. Broad St., beginning at 6 PM.
Pibby's Bicycle And Skate: Fortress Of Solitude
Pibby's Bicycle And Skate presents the first public showing of Fortress Of Solitude, a collection of new works by Mickael Broth. The exhibition will open with a reception on First Friday, February 1, from 7-9 PM, at Pibby's Bicycle And Skate, located at 209 W. Broad St.
Richmond Public Library: Beneath The Surface, A Personal Journey Of Growth, & Freedom Vs. Foundation
Kathleen Hall, Bursting Forth, oil on canvas, 48 X 36
Richmond Public Library presents three different exhibitions. Beneath the Surface, palette-knife paintings by Kathleen Hall; A Personal Journey of Growth, oils from impressionism toward abstraction by Marta Downs; Freedom vs. Foundation, photos by W. Jerry Jones. These exhibitions will premiere with a reception on First Friday, February 1 beginning at 7 PM, along with a presentation by The Richmond Peace Education Center's Youth Educoncert, of a program commemorating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, at the main branch of the Richmond Public Library, located at 101 E. Franklin St.
ADA Gallery: Small Truth
ADA Gallery presents Small Truth, a selection of new works by Langdon Graves.
In her work, Graves explores the human body as fragments of bone, tissue, metaphor and belief in an effort to examine the split between how science and religion have historically sought to explain natural phenomena and the origins of our human existence. She draws on concepts derived from the ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles, whose ideas readily embraced and mixed scientific explanation and observation of the natural world with elements of the divine and the mythic. The imagery in her works invoke Empedocles' descriptions of the human body as an aggregate of anatomical fragments that function through an unusual and at times bewildering mix of botanical processes, surgical procedures, nautical symbols, and sacred rituals, all placed together as if on a dissecting table.
The title of the exhibition Small Truth is a reference to a line from the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, which Graves sees as suggesting that our understanding of the world and appreciation of its mysteries is formed from the examination of its minute parts and that which is near to us:
"The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence."
Small Truth will open with a reception on First Friday, February 1, from 7-9 PM, at ADA Gallery, located at 228 W. Broad St. The exhibition will remain on display through March 10.
Steady Sounds: Art Made By Jenn Rockwell
Steady Sounds presents an exhibition of new works by local artist Jenn Rockwell. Art Made By Jenn Rockwell opens with a reception on First Friday, February 1, from 6-9 PM, at Steady Sounds, located at 322 W. Broad St. The exhibition will remain on display through the month of February.
Glave Kocen Gallery: Greg Osterhaus, New Works
Red Barn On Fiery Mountain
oil on canvas, 36x48
Glave Kocen Gallery presents a collection of new works by Greg Osterhaus.
"Color intoxicates, composition challenges the intellect, nature feeds the human soul. It is the combination of these components on a once-blank canvas that opens up a universe of possibilities. My paintings are as much about the paint as they are about the subject matter. Rather than seeing a photograph, I would like the viewer to “connect” with the painting, to share in the visual language and embrace the underlying emotion I have experienced as I orchestrate each piece." --Greg Osterhaus
This exhibition will open with a reception on First Friday, February 1, from 6-9 PM, at Glave Kocen Gallery, located at 1620 W. Main St. The paintings will remain on display through February 23.
Artemis Gallery: Eros And Arrows
Artemis Gallery presents Valentine cards made by local artists to express everything that store bought cards never say. The deeper emotions that come from romance and the taking of risks creates pain as well as pleasure; no more saccharin sweet cards for Artemis Gallery!
Come and see what creative and talented artists have come up with to express the theme of Eros!
Eros And Arrows will open with a reception on First Friday, February 1, from 5-10 PM, featuring music by the Floating Folk Festival, at Artemis Gallery, located at 1601 W. Main St. The exhibit will remain on display throughout the month of February.
Visual Arts Center: Substitutions For A Game Never Played
Animals 2, acrylic, oil and spray paint on linen. 77" x 130"
Visual Arts Center presents Substitutions For A Game Never Played, an exhibition of paitings by Megan Marlatt.
Megan Marlatt paints mounds of plastic toys, creating artificial landscapes piled high with subtle references to social/ political issues and pop culture. Her skilled, observational still lifes are amassed from objects of childhood play, but their material associations evoke narratives and anxieties regarding consumerism, foreign manufacturaing, and environmental waste. Technically masterful, Marlatt’s paintings and drawings are both comic and menacing, allowing the viewer to reminiscence lightheartedly about a particular toy or contemplate the magnitude of our immeasurable reliance on plastic.
Substitutions For A Game Never Played opens with a reception on First Friday, February 1, from 6-10 PM, at Visual Arts Center, located at 1812 W. Main St. The exhibition will remain on display through March 13.
DéCOR Design Center Of Richmond: Emerging Energy: Symbiosis of Nature & Man
Décor presents an exhibition of works by Joanne Coleman, Emerging Energy: Symbiosis Of Nature & Man.
Joanne Coleman has studied art along the East and West Coast of the US and in Europe. Her travels inspire her unique organic paintings of natural surroundings. Much of her work is composed of organic materials growing on her rural property and also vegetation collected on her hiking expeditions domestically and abroad.
Joanne has studied art in college and also with some highly acclaimed artists. Painting, drawing and sculpture were always part of her life from a very early age. The title, Emerging Energy: Symbiosis of Nature and Man, implies the rejuvenation of energy from viewing her art, allowing one to feel uplifted and connected to nature.
This month, DéCOR has partnered with local nonprofit organization, CancerDancer, to sponsor Emerging Energy. During the opening reception, we will be raffling off several arts related items, including a gift certificate for classes generously donated by ArtHaus Visual Arts Studio; a framing gift certificate from Fralin Art & Frame, DéCOR’s own frame shop; as well as a painting by the artist herself, Joanne Coleman. 10% of the art sale proceeds will be donated to CancerDancer.
Emerging Energy will open with a reception on First Friday, February 1, from 6-9 PM, at DéCOR Design Center Of Richmond, located at 19 S. Belmont Ave. The exhibition will remain on display through February 23.
Red Door Gallery: Brooks Anderson & Tom Hale
Brooks Anderson, "Powhatan, No. 2, Study", 16" x 20", oil on canvas
Red Door Gallery presents New Works by Brooks Anderson, along with a continuation of the exhibition of recent abstract work by Tom Hale.
Brooks Anderson is an immensely talented and popular artist working in oil to capture the majestic landscape and light of Northern California. This show includes a few rare East Coast scenes of Powhatan and the James River.
Tom is a well-respected Richmond artist, and is breaking away from his traditional landscapes with new abstract landscapes. Extended through February by popular demand.
This exhibit will open with a reception on First Friday, February 1, from 6-9 PM, at Red Door Gallery, located at 1607 W. Main St. The paintings will remain on display throughout the month of February.
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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.