Creature conflicts People often describe Aggie Zed’s sculptures as “whimsical,” or “cute.” “I can see whimsical, but I don’t ever see cute,” says the artist, who uses handmade ceramic and mechanical bits in combination with found materials such as scrap metal, wire, and plastic milk jugs to create what she calls “really dear beings that […]
A professor of printmaking at UVA, where he has taught since 1985, Dean Dass began painting 20 years ago, with the process-rich, methodical approach of a printmaker. “Dean Dass: Venus and the Moon” at Les Yeux du Monde marks the artist’s 10th solo show at the gallery, and he continues to work in both disciplines. […]
ARTCHO festival makes art available to all Home. It’s sweet. There’s no place like it. It’s where the heart is, and it’s where charity often begins. The same can be said for this year’s ARTCHO festival, to take place this Saturday, November 2, at IX Art Park from 10:30am to 5:30pm. ARTCHO’s goal is a […]
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 [...]
An artist’s journey The night Alp Isin heard that his friend and fellow artist Gabriel Allan passed away, he couldn’t stop thinking about Allan’s sculptures. Though Isin had seen “a bunch” of Allan’s pieces, covering a range of times and places, he “wasn’t sure what the totality was. That day, [...]
These are a few of Ryan Trott’s favorite things Cups, mugs, hands, feet, flowers, water drops—these are just some of the everyday objects that inspire Ryan Trott. Simplified shapes repeat throughout “Things,” the artist’s exhibition now on view through the month of September at the New [...]
Head south on Harris Street, cruise past Napa Auto Parts and Sarisand Tile. Hug the first curve in the road before The Habitat Store, and there on the left, above the roof of Intrastate Pest Control, the dusty rumble of Allied Concrete cement mixers in the near distance, you’ll see it: a mural. [...]
Openings Chroma Projects Inside Vault Virginia, Third Street SE. “Memorial,” an immersive audio/visual installation by Bolanle Adeboye, Richelle Claiborne, and Leslie Scott-Jones, with music from Lou “Waterloo” Hampton and Mike Moxham, that considers the African American perspective and makes [...]
Do you know where your oxygen comes from? Trees, shrubs, grass, sure. But scientists estimate that at least half (and maybe even up to 85 percent) of all oxygen on planet Earth comes from phytoplankton, one-celled plants that live on the surface of the ocean, gobble up ocean nutrients and [...]
Our ability to look at art—to see color, shape, texture—comes from light. We’ll spare you an in-depth science lesson, but most basically, light reflects off objects and into the eye. Cells in the retina (at the back of the eye) convert light into electrical impulses, which the optic nerve sends [...]
Over the past few weeks, Charlottesville artists have been mourning the loss and celebrating the life and work of one of their own. Local sculptor Gabriel Allan, whose larger-than-life bronze sculpture of a fire-winged man, “The Messenger,” is at IX Art Park, died March 15. Gabe, who grew up [...]
Winter gray getting you down? Les Yeux du Monde offers a potent dose of Southwestern heat in the form of paintings by Russ Warren and sculptures by Ed Haddaway that will banish those February blues. The two artists, who are native Texans, met as students at the University of New Mexico in 1971, [...]
When artist Karina A. Monroy moved from California to Charlottesville in February 2017, she started making pieces that comforted her. She reinterpreted or slightly altered scenes from her mother’s and grandmother’s homes, places where she rooted and grew not just herself, but the bonds with the [...]
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 [...]
While working on her newest series of paintings, Uzo Njoku learned the importance of telling a story through portraiture. The story Njoku tells with “Out of the Shadows,” on view this month at the New City Arts Welcome Gallery, is one that has global reach and widespread effects, and is perhaps [...]
In the early hours of February 1, John Borden Evans was out for his regular run through Walnut Creek Park when he paused to memorize the landscape before him. He noticed how the setting moon hung low and bright in the sky, how the moonlight radiated through striated clouds to bathe the [...]
Michael “Doc” Doyle believes that the hardest thing you experience in life is your best chance to find out who you are. For Doyle, a carpenter who studied metal sculpture in art school, that chance came in the form of jail time. After battling addiction and depression, Doyle attempted suicide [...]
What happens when two artists walk into a bar? Ask textile artist Tobiah Mundt and painter Kim Anderson and you’ll get the same answer: It’s an immediate connection. Both women relocated to Charlottesville with their families, Mundt from northern Virginia and Anderson from Nebraska, and sought [...]
A few months ago, artist Uzo Njoku was in the market for a new coloring book. She noticed that most coloring books geared toward adults, like the ubiquitous Enchanted Garden, featured densely outlined flora and fauna, medallions, and mandalas, and that most coloring books for children contained [...]
“The root of my inspiration—pun intended—is firmly planted in the natural world,” says local artist Sam Gray. “When I’m feeling crazy, the best medicine is to go into the woods and be with the mosses, trees, herbs, fungi and critters,” she says. “I find a lot of magic in that connection.” That [...]