Shows
The Dore ReportEp. 167: Top 5 Memorial Gym Moments + Isaiah West commitsBilly Derrick and Will Byrum rank their top 5 moments inside Memorial Gym + discuss the commitment of Goodpasture standout Isaiah West (4-star/combo guard).
PLUS: Other recruiting notes such as Andrew Paige de-committing + Andrew Dutkanych foregoing the MLB Draft2022-07-011h 03
LookSEEIn SeasonSarah Mizer is an artist who works in glass and on paper. In her work, she explores themes of time and fragility. Light itself is one of the materials Sarah works with, both in glass and on paper. And her beautiful gallery, Alma’s, uses the abundant light pouring in through the enormous storefront windows to great effect, showing off the beautiful things inside to their full advantage. The gallery combines handmade everyday objects and adornments with fine craft. A visit with Sarah at Alma’s is such a pleasure. Sarah is a fantastically generous tour guide for artists and work...2020-12-1032 min
LookSEEWorking Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge WorkshopIn February of this year, a show, long in the making, of the work of a collective of black photographers in 1960s New York City called the Komoinge Workshop, had just opened with a joyful celebration at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. And then the world changed. We are living with a pandemic. Our city was a center of racial justice protests that roiled our country in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others. And now we are on the brink of a national election that will speak to how we see ourselves...2020-10-1527 min
LookSEEGreat ForceThe exhibition Great Force, currently on view at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, addresses the force of whiteness, the counter-force of black resistance, and the persistence of the color line in the United States. With new commissions and recent work by twenty-four artists, the exhibition presents painting, sculpture, photography, video, and performance that examine race in the United States. I had the opportunity to talk with the curator of Great Force, Amber Esseiva, about the show, its artists and works of art.2020-01-0400 minLookSEEIn Search of Other Mothers' Gardens, We Made ArmorFor the exhibition In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, We Made Armor, artist and curator Mahari Chabwera creates a sanctuary site for Black womxn artists to honor their ancestors and honor and care for themselves, a safe place to make and show work, to be vulnerable, to be glorious, to heal, to grow, to dream. Mahari has gathered a group of 6 Black womxn artists who are each exploring the tension between protection and vulnerability, who are embracing the opportunity to be seen as artists in this cultural moment while also being thoughtful about what is seen and who will control th...2019-12-0600 minLookSEECindy NeuschwanderArtist Cindy Neuschwander, who died in 2012, is known especially for her sensuous abstract encaustic paintings, but her artistic journey was diverse and varied. Early in her career, she focused on straight photography, using a large format box camera to produce modern images that explored issues of identity, vulnerability, relationship and isolation, among other things. Later Neuschwander experimented with where photography could take her in her exploration of these ideas. She painted and collaged over the images, marking and scratching the surface and sometimes even the negatives. The result was a body of work, made in the late 1980s, that draws...2019-08-1600 minLookSEEAimee JoyauxAimee Joyaux is an abundantly creative and endlessly curious artist who has her artist’s mind in lots of places. She is a painter, a photographer, and a performance artist. She is a printmaker and a teacher. Drawing plays a central role in her artistic practice. The renovated antebellum cotton warehouse in Petersburg, Virginia, that she and her husband Alain call home contains artistic multitudes, including a painting studio, a darkroom, a print and letterpress shop and Alain’s woodworking studio. In her work, Aimee uses color, language, iconography, and found materials to respond in a visceral way to current even...2019-08-1300 minLookSEEMartine SymsContemporary art is often defined as the art of the now. The work of Martine Syms is of this very moment. Defining herself as a conceptual entrepreneur, she adopts any discipline, any distribution method, any formal strategies and models that respond to the shifting boundaries of culture and business. Regardless of the lens she is using, her work investigates how Blackness is circulated as an image. One of her main interests has been the entertainment industry, especially film. Black references are at the core of the movies - black gestures, movement, language style, and fashion all essentially shape what we...2019-03-1100 minLookSEEGrowing Up in Civil Rights RichmondGrowing Up in Civil Rights Richmond: A Community Remembers pairs oral histories with vibrant, large-scale portraits of 30 Richmond, Virginia, residents whose lives were altered by their experiences as children and youth during the civil rights movement. The portraits are a collaboration between photographer Brian Palmer and the sitter - each person has clearly chosen the way in which he or she wants to be seen, and a visitor to the galleries cannot dismiss these powerful people and their courage and determination. Each is accompanied by excerpts from interviews conducted by UR professor Laura Browder as she spoke with participants about...2019-03-0400 minLookSEEErvin A. JohnsonErvin A. Johnson’s arresting large-scale, photo-based work is rooted in his personal experiences as a queer black man and the killing of black people across America. #InHonor is a series of photographic mixed media portraits that represent Johnson’s visceral response to racism and police brutality done to the black body. Johnson began InHonor around the time of the Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner protests as a way to make his voice heard. He wants these portraits to stand as a forceful and visceral reminder of the strength, resiliency and beauty of the black body.2019-01-1000 minLookSEEHouse Hold: Joan Gaustad + Michael LeaseRichmond is an artistically rich city and that abundance allows for fantastic collaborations like House Hold, on view now at Sediment Arts. Organized around a collaborative book project, Joan Gaustad, Michael Lease, Amber Esseiva and Claire Zitzow create a gallery collage, the creative story of all four, intimate and immersive.2018-11-0100 minLookSEEHowardena Pindell:What Remains to Be SeenSince the 1960s, multidisciplinary artist Howardena Pindell has been pushing the limits. She was one of the first women of color to curate at a major museum, an abstract painter when black artists were expected to represent their ideas figuratively, and overt about social and political issues when abstract artists where expected to produce work free of such “impurities”. She broke the boundaries of painting itself, using unconventional materials and techniques in her work from the beginning of her career. And she continues to challenge art world dogma as her career moves into its 6th decade. Join LookSEE for a conv...2018-09-2600 minLookSEEHarrison WalkerHarrison Walker describes what he does as creating prints and/as objects. In his first solo exhibition at Candela Gallery, he presents his Portals project. In this series, he uses the most basic elements of photography - light, paper, and chemicals - to explore color, chemistry, and psychological perception. Each of Harrison’s striking images are the same in some very important ways - he uses the same steel disk in each piece, placed in the same place on uniformly sized paper. And yet, there is endless variation in the work, which consists so far of over 130 prints. Each of th...2018-06-1400 minLookSEEChris McCawChris McCaw first encountered a darkroom when he was 13 years old, and he has been making photos ever since. What he does is straight photography - a lens, the light, a camera, and something to receive the light. That’s it. Elemental. Elemental is also the perfect description of the primary subject of his work - the movement of the sun across the landscape, often in the most remote places on Earth. Chris has taken his homemade, monumental cameras to the Mojave Desert, the equator, and the Arctic Circle to photograph the cycle of night and day in its variations. Th...2018-05-2100 minLookSEEMaria ChavezBorn in Lima, Peru, Maria Chavez is an an abstract turntablist, sound artist, and DJ. Accidents, coincidence, and failures are themes that unite her sound sculptures, installations, and other works with her solo turntable performance practice. She visited Richmond for a ten-day artist residency at the University of Richmond and to kick off Sound Arts Richmond, a citywide sound arts festival that continues through August of this year. I spoke with Maria as she was installing Topography of Sound: Peaks and Valleys Series, a solo exhibition of new paintings and illustrations based on microscopic images of vinyl and needle. Chavez c...2018-04-1000 minLookSEEChester HigginsMany people think about photography as a way of stopping time, preserving what we are seeing in the moment the picture is made. But Chester Higgins uses his camera to search for the unseen and make it visible. He challenges what we think we know and asks us to see the spirit, giving visual definition to the lived human experience.
Chester’s works are currently on view at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts as part two of a series of exhibitions showing images from the Black Photographers Annual, a 4-part publication that was inspired by the Black Arts Movement of...2018-03-2700 minLookSEEBruce WilhelmBruce Wilhelm wasn’t born a painter, but almost. From the time he got his first set of paints as a teenager, painting has been at the center of his life. It’s how he works out thoughts and feelings. As a very shy young man, it was a way for him to put himself out there without words, and it is still a very intuitive process for him. In a new body of work, Bruce has wholeheartedly embraced abstraction. In his previous work, he often used figures to anchor work that explored many of the same themes seen in thes...2018-01-2600 minLookSEEThe Embedded Message: Quilting in Contemporary ArtCategories of the past are collapsing in contemporary art. Artists use the medium and materials that are the best conduit for personal, political and social messaging, and often their artistic practices include many processes at once.
As they looked closely at work being made by contemporary artists, curators Stefanie Fedor and Melissa Messina repeatedly saw the quilt being used by contemporary artists as a medium to explore questions and communicate messages. They put together an exhibition that allows artists to tell us why the quilt right now. I spoke with them both, and quilt artist Gina Adams, just as the...2018-01-1200 minLookSEENancy BlumOn first look, the flowers that are the primary subject of Nancy Blum’s work are reassuringly familiar. But look for a few moments, and you begin to notice that things are not what they seem. These drawings portray botanical superheroes with agency and power without relation to human beings - we are not a part of their world. The riotous energy that is barely contained in Nancy’s detailed wonderlands doesn’t depend on us. These plants carry on joyfully without us.2017-12-0700 minLookSEEMichael-Birch PierceVisiting an artist’s studio is a precious gift, and visiting the studio of fiber artist Michael-Birch Pierce is a special kind of awesome. His studio, in an old warehouse on Mayo Island in the middle of the James River, is a sensuous experience. Crystals and sequins sparkle from every surface, and sumptuous fur, velvet and lace are piled in every corner. Michael-Birch uses these materials in his work, using his background in fashion design to exquisitely craft sculptural pieces that challenge to viewer to think deeply about the identity that we wear. At the same time, Michael-Birch recognizes the co...2017-11-1700 minLookSEEAndrea DonnellyFor fiber artist Andrea Donnelly, the loom is a tool for mark-making, along with other materials like ink, dyes, and found items like milkweed pods. And making art is a full-body experience. When she finishes a piece, it contains not only the woven cloth and ink that we see, but also the marks of her body. The tension of opposing concepts also plays a big role in Andrea’s work - the discipline of weaving and the impulsivity of painting on cloth with ink, the presence of time and the shadow of memory, density and transparency, even the literal weaving, un...2017-11-1000 minLookSEEValerie Cassel OliverContemporary art is a primary driver of attendance and attention for art museums today. Museum goers line up for hours, online and in person, to score tickets to blockbuster exhibitions like Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms or to get into hot contemporary art museums like The Broad in Los Angeles, where you can watch the wait time tick up on a dedicated Twitter account. Contemporary art can also be a bit confusing. But the eclectic and inclusive nature of art being made today has a lot to teach us about how to experience the world we live in.
Valerie Ca...2017-10-2500 minLookSEEJohanna MinichOpportunities to encounter Native American art presented with depth and nuance are rare. Significant collections and special exhibitions of Native American art are few and far between. Many of us may have a narrow view of indigenous art as historical artifacts. Hear My Voice, a VMFA exhibition currently on view, aims to change that by exploring conversations between Native American artists and their art across time, space, and cultures. I spoke with curator Johanna Minich about the ways in which the exhibition sparks this dialogue.2017-10-1200 minLookSEEAaron McIntoshAaron McIntosh is a fourth-generation quilter and multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores the intersections of material culture, family tradition, identity formation, sexuality, and desire. Using quilting, sculpture, and other artistic practices as a material dialect, he examines images and cultural artifacts to construct his own complicated narrative as a nerdy Appalachian queer guy.2017-10-0300 minLookSEECollector Series: Ted ElmoreWhy do people collect art? I’ve wondered what inspires people to spend time and money filling their homes, and sometimes private galleries and even warehouses, with works of art. Is it prestige? A desire to be a part of a creative endeavor? An effort to engage with a community of artists? Is it an obsession? An investment? Or something else all together? The New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman wrote that the consolation of art comes in many forms. For some, it is making; for others it is having. Collecting art can be a creative act, when done wi...2017-07-1000 minLookSEEFor artist Nate Young, reality and truth are not always one and the sameNate Young is a Chicago-based artist who is best known for his exquisite work with wood. I think his work can best be called conceptually narrative. It is inspired by personal recollection, oral history, and family relics, among other things, but this story cannot be seen directly in Nate’s work. It’s more accurate to say that it can be felt, sensed, intuited. Recollection, an exhibition of Nate's newest work at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, is spare and ethereal. The objects in the show tell a story, about family and identity and memory, and they are also abou...2017-05-2800 minLookSEEFor artist John Freyer, the connection is the thingWhen John Freyer spoke at TEDxRVA, he was the only speaker to roll a large tricycle bike onto the stage while drinking ice water from a blue Mason jar. John’s many projects have appeared in many places, from New York City galleries to the Richmond Street Art Festival. Recently, he even took his fancy bike and Recovery Roast coffee to the Capitol Square and shared a cup with Governor Terry McAullife. His work involves performance, film and video, photography, and social practice. He also teaches at VCU and mentors and advises groups that support college students who are in re...2017-05-0200 minLookSEEVMFA Chief Curator Michael Taylor loves his jewel of an art museumThis week, I went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to talk with Michael Taylor, the museum’s chief curator and deputy director for art and education. Michael is a relative newcomer to Richmond, and he doesn't take this jewel of an art museum for granted. We talked about the ways that museums are changing, as people expect to experience the art and the space differently, how contemporary art is front and center, and enlivening the galleries by challenging the art history status quo.2017-05-0200 minLookSEEPhotographer Cynthia Henebry and the gift of the momentPhotographer Cynthia Henebry's photos have been on view in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the National Portrait Gallery. But while Cynthia doesn’t shun success, it is not her true reward.The true gift is in the moment of connection between her and the person she is photographing. The picture that comes of it is a bonus. Cynthia's intuitive work explores on the complexity of childhood, the loneliness and worry as well as the sweetness and adventure. In our conversation, she talks about how her life informs her work, her way of approaching the work, and what photography is...2017-05-0200 min