By Ramona Martinez The paintings in “Solace,” shown this month on Studio IX’s virtual gallery, are large. Most of them are three-by-four feet, and would doubtless be particularly compelling in person. But it is a testament to Grace Ho’s voice as an artist that, even on a computer screen, her work leaves a big impression. […]
One of the first assignments Stacey Evans gives her photography class is to visit the same place at different times throughout the day, a few days in a row. She tasks her PVCC students with noticing the light, how it’s different minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day. If Monday’s morning light is […]
Throughout the month of March, sad email after sad email landed in Kristen Chiacchia’s inbox. Art fairs postponed, gallery shows canceled, museums closed to the public—and then there were the news reports. The Second Street Gallery executive director and chief curator decided to close her gallery on March 13, but she didn’t want to contribute […]
Two weeks ago, Eze Amos was “bored as hell.” Usually the photographer is running around Charlottesville at all hours, snapping candid shots of everyday life in the city—buskers, beer drinkers, sidewalk chalkers, protesters—shooting weddings, or completing assignments for this newspaper. But [...]
Art in all its forms accomplishes many things. It can entertain. It can teach us something new about ourselves, or others. It can keep us company, keep us busy, keep us calm. It can inspire. It can comfort. At its core, art is about shared humanity. With that in mind, The Bridge Progressive [...]
In an effort to help artists facing financial hardship because of venue closures and event cancellations due to COVID-19, The Bridge PAI and New City Arts Initiative launched the Charlottesville Emergency Relief Fund for Artists on March 20. Artists can apply to receive up to $300; all they [...]
By Ramona Martinez The 11 wood sculptures that make up Renee Balfour’s “New Work” at McGuffey Art Center have a haunting stillness. Hung around the main gallery, some white and some unpainted, they are reminiscent of bones and fossilized plants—like prehistoric objects suspended in time. The [...]
Phuong Nguyen’s small wonders In recent years, artist Phuong Nguyen has learned the truth of a common proverb: Big things do indeed come in small packages. After graduating from UVA in 2015, she struggled to find a studio that would allow her to paint and print on a large scale. So she changed [...]
They appeared over the summer, three identical wheatpaste posters of anthropomorphic hot dogs in buns, wearing sneakers and pedaling unicycles as they exclaimed in speech bubbles, “Hot dog!” One, pasted to the side of the raised parking lot between Market and South Streets, was gone after about [...]
Precarious balance Polly Breckenridge’s monotypes at Chroma Projects Part of the appeal of printmaking is that it gives an artist the ability to create multiple copies of the same image. But for local artist Polly Breckenridge, the attraction lies in the printmaking process itself—the way the [...]
Two days before the opening of their joint show at Studio IX, Virginia Rieley and Eliza Evans are together in the gallery space, spreading their art multi-dimensionally throughout the room. Evans is on a ladder, hanging dried gourds that she grew in her garden and then used as portrait [...]
Jo Lee Tarbell likes fabric and color, and the evidence is all around this 85-year-old quilter’s Charlottesville home. A traditional quilt she hand-stitched stretches across her bed, at its center a multi-color, many-pointed star bursting forth from an ivory background. Draped over the back of [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Rayne MacPhee thought her dad was having a midlife crisis. Apropos of nothing, he’d announced to the family that he was going to start keeping bees in their Greenville, South Carolina, yard. The next weekend, there they were: A few hives and thousands of honeybees. MacPhee didn’t pay much [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Soft morning light filters in through the window of Andy Faith’s studio in the basement of McGuffey Art Center, and try as it might, the light can’t possibly illuminate every object on every shelf in the place. There’s an old Monticello Dairy ice cream carton, yellowed and full of rusty nails; [...]