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 pressure of the press embosses each design element into […]
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 canvases. Rieley stands in front of […]
Glow up: The longest night of the year is celebrated with beauty and promise at the annual Let There Be Light festival. To honor the approaching solstice, curator and artist James Yates features illuminated outdoor works by Circe Strauss, Patty Swygert, Chris Haske, Andrew Sherogan, Dom Morse, and a group of Murray High School students, […]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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; [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]