2008-2009 Gallery Exhibitions

J.J. Cromer: Our Stampedes are Compatible

September 1 - October 3, 2008

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. A former resident of Buena Vista and an artist with a national reputation as an outsider artist, Cromer works through an obsessive, intuitive process that includes paint, collage, pen and ink, and colored pencil. His work has been shown in Germany as well as throughout the United States, and is in the public collections of Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, The Taubman Museum of Art and the University of Virginia. He is represented by Grey Carter Objects of Art in McLean, Va.

Alberto Rey: Life, Death, and Beauty

October 13 - November 5, 2008

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. The SUNY Distinguished Professor of Research and Creative Activity (SUNY Fredonia) is also an Orvis- endorsed fly-fishing guide and the founder and director of the S.A.R.E.P. Youth Fly Fishing Program. His Aesthetics of Death series draws on references to the art historical traditions of piscatorial art and nature painting, which includes such painters as Winslow Homer, Thomas Cole and Gustave Courbet. It also alludes to the fragility and richness of biological life, both human and animal. Several of the works in Life, Death and Beauty are based on visual information gathered in the Shenandoah Valley when Rey was a visiting artist at Washington and Lee University in May 2008. During the exhibition, Rey will again be a visiting artist in the Art Department and student work from his previous residency will be on view in Lykes Atrium in Wilson Hall.

Artist residencies in the Art Department are made possible by generous support of the William Hollis Visiting Artist Fund.

Dave Anderson: Rough Beauty

November 10 - December 12, 2008

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. Anderson’s photographs also bring to light the resiliency and hidden beauty within this community. Anderson and Rough Beauty have been profiled on NPR and on Canadian television, and Rough Beauty was the winner of the Santa Fe Center for Photography 2005 Project Competition. During the exhibition, Anderson will spend a week in the Art Department as a visiting artist.

Artist residencies in the Art Department are made possible by generous support of the William Hollis Visiting Artist Fund.

Satoru Hoshino and Michael Kenna: Weightless

January 5 - 30, 2009

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. Both artists have extensive international reputations. Hoshino is an important Japanese craftsman working in the art of post-object ceramics. He has had artist’s residencies and exhibited his work throughout Japan, Europe and the United States. English-born Kenna, who now lives in Seattle, Wash., has had hundreds of solo and group exhibitions throughout the world since 1979, published several books, including Japan (2006) from which the present exhibition is drawn, and received numerous awards. The artists will participate in the Art Department’s visiting artist program during the exhibition.

Artist residencies in the Art Department are made possible by generous support of the William Hollis Visiting Artist Fund.

William Christenberry

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. Including drawings, paintings, constructions, dream buildings and the Klan Room Tableau, Site/Possession reveals Christenberry’s persistent exploration of the vitality and transient nature of memory through imagery based on Hale County, Ala. and its personal and historical significance for the artist. During the exhibition, William Christenberry will spend a week in the Art Department as a visiting artist.

Artist residencies in the Art Department are made possible by generous support of the William Hollis Visiting Artist Fund.

The Divas and Iron Chefs of Encaustic

April 20 - May 15, 2009

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 artist approaches the process from a distinctive perspective that may incorporate scraping, burning, incising, dipping or pouring, as well as painting, collage, printmaking, drawing or installation. Within the process-orientation of the exhibition are numerous conceptual links revealing buried and fragmented images and references.

During the exhibition, the curator and participating artists will hold a panel discussion and conduct encaustic workshops with studio art students as part of the Art Department’s visiting artist program.

2009 Senior Theses Exhibition

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. The group show includes a wide range of artworks from two-dimensional media such as painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography to three-dimensional media such as sculpture and ceramics.