First Fridays: March 3

In “Drawings, Old and New,” at the downtown Mudhouse through the month of March, Mae Read exhibits a series of nudes, mostly women, drawn either from life, or from photographs. When Read draws, she connects deeply to her subject and herself.

“Spending that many hours staring at almost any person will create that, and it’s something we need more of. Or I do, anyway,” she says. Many of her drawings are so exquisitely executed that upon first glance they look like photographs, and they remind the viewer that we are all vulnerable, we are all flawed, we are all incomplete, and we all need to reconsider our notions of beauty.

Art on the Trax 5784 Three Notch’d Rd., Crozet. “En Plein Air,” featuring Karyn Gunter Smith’s landscapes of the barrier islands and Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Opens Saturday, March 4.

FF The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative 209 Monticello Rd. “World Art Exhibition,” a collection of 33 drawings created by refugees living in Charlottesville. Light House Studio’s short film The Things They Carried will play during the opening. 5:30pm.

FF C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St. “Mending Souls One Stitch at a Time,” featuring functional and decorative quilts by Sally Mann. 6-8pm.

FF Chroma Projects Gallery 112 W. Main St., Ste. 10. “Deep Sea Calculations,” featuring drawings by Carolyn Capps that explore the relationship between chaos and order through the depiction of flotsam in the ocean. 5-7pm.

Crozet Library 2020 Library Ave., Crozet. “Botanical in Nature,” featuring landscapes, still lifes and florals by Jane Fellows.

Deese Hall 4133 Earlysville Rd., Earlysville. An exhibit featuring paintings inspired by nature from Deborah Rose Guterbock along with figurative paintings and comics illustrations from Aaron Arthur Irvine Miller.

FF Fellini’s #9 200 Market St. “Paintings of Italy,” featuring plein air oil paintings by Karyn Gunther Smith. 5:30-7pm.

The Fralin Museum at UVA 155 Rugby Rd. “Rough and Unequal,” a commissioned work by Kevin Everson that documents, among other things, the waxing and waning of the moon; and “Oriforme” by Jean Arp.

FF Graves International Art 306 E. Jefferson St. “Roy Lichtenstein & Company: Post War and Contemporary Art,” featuring handmade limited edition prints and exhibition posters by notable artists such as Lichtenstein, Gerhard Richter, David Hockney, Keith Haring, Ellsworth Kelly and others. 5-8pm.

FF Jefferson-Madison Regional Library Central Library 201 E. Market St. “#BlackOwnedCville,” an exhibit of photography by documentary filmmaker and photographer Lorenzo Dickerson about African-American business owners in Charlottesville and Albemarle County. 5pm.

Kluge-Ruhe Collection 400 Worrell Dr. “Body Ornaments,” objects by indigenous Australian ceramic artist Janet Fieldhouse, whose residency at the collection begins March 10.

Les Yeux du Monde 841 Wolf Trap Rd. “Big Heads and Small Giants,” an exhibit that pairs Megan Marlatt’s paintings and papier-mâché “Big Heads” with Margaret McCann’s paintings that explore wild scale dislocation and “headworks” portraits.

FF McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. “Transformations,” featuring work from Robin Braun, Roberto Kamide and Charlene Cross, three artists from different backgrounds who came together to transform and repurpose various materials into something new, in the Sarah B. Smith Gallery; “Horizons,” featuring mixed-media watercolor collage by Judy McLeod in the Lower Hall North; “At Play in the Fields of the Goddess,” featuring recent paintings and musings about the natural world on furniture, board and canvas by Dominique Anderson in the Lower Hall South; “Remote Sensing,” featuring mixed-media work by Christopher Headings in the Upper Hall North; and “Passport,” featuring colored pencil drawings on paper from Sophia Wideman’s forthcoming autobiographical graphic novel in the Upper Hall South. 5:30-7:30pm.

Mudhouse Coffee Roasters 213 W. Main St. “Drawings, Old and New” featuring a range from quick figure studies to intricately detailed charcoal on paper drawings by Mae Read.

FF Second Street Gallery 115 Second St. SE. “Memoria y Creencias Culturales/Memory and Cultural Beliefs,” featuring the work of José Bedia, a contemporary Cuban painter who explores cultural preservation through the research and collection of indigenous and African art, and adapts those forms in the visual language of his paintings and large-scale installations. 5:30-7:30pm.

Shenandoah Valley Fine Art Center 26 S. Wayne Ave., Waynesboro. “40Under40,” an annual juried exhibit featuring the work of Virginia artists age 40 and under.

FF Spring Street Boutique 107 W. Main St. “Denali: The Jagged Side of Alaska,” featuring photography by Pete McCutchen. 6-8pm.

FF Studio IX 969 Second St. SE. “The Painted Violin Project,” featuring otherwise unusable instruments made into works of art to be auctioned off to support the Charlottesville High School orchestra string ensemble’s trip to Ireland in June. 5-7pm.

Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church Unitarian-Universalist 717 Rugby Rd. An exhibit of Frank Simari’s digitally enhanced photos. Opens March 5.

FF University of Virginia Medical Center 1335 Lee St. “Spring on the Horizon,” featuring oil paintings by Randy Baskerville. 3:30-5pm.

FF VMDO Architects 200 E. Market St. “A thousand Wishes,” featuring Silvi Stefi’s acrylic paintings on canvas that incorporate recycled shredded paper, glass, metal, glitter and rocks. 5:30pm.

FF Welcome Gallery at New City Arts 114 Third St. NE. “Charcoal and Steel,” featuring paintings by Cate West Zahl and sculpture by Nick Watson. 5-7:30pm.

FF WVTF & Radio IQ Studio Gallery 218 W. Water St. “Papillon,” featuring abstract paintings by April Sanders and watercolors by Gina Langford. 5-7pm.

FF First Fridays is a monthly art event featuring exhibit openings at many downtown art galleries and additional exhibition venues. Several spaces offer receptions. Send gallery listings to arts@c-ville.com.

Mae Read

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