Meticulously detailed, J. J. Cromer’s mixed media works of art seem like visual music. Repetitive, rhythmic colors and shapes fill their surfaces. Sinuous lines wind through the patterns enclosing the fanciful figures—animal, human, object—that suggest poetic and philosophical themes within his work.

Cuban-American painter and videographer Alberto Rey incorporates environmental issues and social disconnections into his realistic investigations of the migratory patterns and biological conditions in local fish populations.

Rough Beauty, Dave Anderson’s photographic documentation of the town of Vidor, Texas, has received international acclaim. Between the fall of 2003 and early 2006, Anderson made 50 trips to Vidor, a hard-scrabble community in southeast Texas reviled for its history of Klan activities. Rough Beauty reveals the lingering effects of this history in a town struggling to create a new identity from a difficult past.

Shown together for the first time, the works of ceramicist Satoru Hoshino and photographer Michael Kenna possess a profound quiet and a sense of space that is unbroken, ordered and ample. Within their work, both abstract and realistic elements of the landscape convey a Zen-like calm.

Curated by Andrea Douglas, curator of collections and exhibitions at the University of Virginia Museum, this exhibition gathers a wide range of this acclaimed artist’s work into a focused examination of his primary motifs.

Curator and artist Reni Gower has assembled an exhibition of works by eight artists that showcases a range of approaches to the encaustic (wax) medium. The works all feature the seductive surface, luminous color and ethereal image layering unique to the medium.

Each year the graduating seniors in studio art exhibit their senior thesis projects in Staniar Gallery. An opportunity for these young artists to show their most advanced and inventive work in a gallery setting, the exhibition is a debut into the professional art world and an occasion for sharing their talent and achievements with the community.