Art Features


CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Feather in her cap: Burke's birds take flight Published on May 22nd, 2008 0 comments From excellent to stellar. From lush to vibrant. The needle on the gauge for assessing Cynthia Burke's oil paintings really doesn't travel very far. For years Burke has turned out gorgeous image...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Art-o-maton: Fiore's machine dreams Published on May 15th, 2008 0 comments IMAGE COURTESY Guilt– probably not the reaction Rosemarie Fiore was going for with her wide-ranging exhibition, "Painting, Performance, Machines" at Second Street Gallery. Yet, confronted...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Unblocked color: Sykes is driven to abstraction Published on May 8th, 2008 0 comments Painter Gresham Sykes had me at orange. Some people are suckers for certain colors, and I admit to a weakness for anything falling between red and yellow on the spectrum. The fact that Sykes'...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Reality check: True views in Barboursville Published on May 1st, 2008 0 comments If you're like me, when the grass turns green, you get the un-green urge to climb behind the wheel and drive. But this year the reality of gas prices threatens to deal a deathblow to wanderlust....
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Smoke and mirrors: Bana and Tarbell shift shapes Published on Apr 24th, 2008 0 comments One dictate from my big book of made-up rules for reviewing local art: Don't give an artist ink more than once in 18 months. Spread the love. (Hey, even when it's tough love, it's still love.) But...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Young at art: High school show is go Published on Apr 17th, 2008 0 comments PUBLICITY PHOTO You know those ubiquitous grocery store plastic bags? The ones that clog both drains and the digestive tracts of sea turtles? Well, St. Anne's-Belfield student Kitty Buchanan-Watson...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Glassy eyed: Three artists' refracted visions Published on Apr 10th, 2008 0 comments When you hear "glass artist," you probably imagine two possibilities: someone carefully seaming together bits of stained glass or someone blowing a hot molten blob into a fragile vessel. If so,...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Expressing oppression: The colors of black and white Published on Apr 3rd, 2008 0 comments > Confession: I've been avoiding the University of Virginia Art Museum. My unpleasant visit there in November combined with the University's abrupt removal of longtime director Jill Hartz led to my...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Shades of gray: Liddell pencils it in Published on Mar 27th, 2008 0 comments Every week, the students enrolled in Drawing II at Piedmont Virginia Community College post their work in the hall outside their first-floor classroom in the V. Earl Dickenson Building. It's...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- In our face: Birk's cutting commentary Published on Mar 20th, 2008 0 comments A burning memory from my Vietnam-era childhood is of sitting with my father in our wood-paneled den as image after image of sweaty, battered soldiers and helicopters flashed across the TV screen....
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Getting seamy: Grahame reaps what she sews Published on Mar 13th, 2008 0 comments It feels like one of those zeitgeist moments. Currently, three shows in town feature work by non-fabric artists who, nevertheless, use stitchery as an element in their compositions. Marie Mennes'...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Abstract distraction: McCarten's convoluted canvases Published on Mar 6th, 2008 0 comments Publicity Photo Last month Leslie Banta's minimal yet complex landscapes at Staunton's Kronos Gallery completely caught me off guard— in a good way— with their intriguing, quiet...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Dynamism down under: The riveting Lockhart River Art Gang Published on Feb 28th, 2008 0 comments IMAGE COURTESY THE ARTIST This winter may be paltry in terms of snowfall, but it has dished out plenty of sullen, gray days like so many bowls of cold gruel. Last Saturday morning, for instance,...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Salt of the earth: Young Kim's sacred elements Published on Feb 21st, 2008 0 comments PUBLICITY PHOTO If you've walked by Second Street Gallery recently, its papered-over windows may have fooled you into thinking the gallery is closed. The obscured glass, however, is not meant to...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Uncommon women: Double x power at PVCC Published on Feb 14th, 2008 0 comments Other than having their names printed alongside a star-spangled poster image of Lynda Carter and sporting two x's in their chromosomal makeup, the five artists featured in Piedmont Virginia...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Crispy critters: Tarbell smiles through Struggles Published on Feb 7th, 2008 0 comments When artist Rob Tarbell moved to Charlottesville a few years ago, he left behind a painful marriage and a job as a full-time college art instructor in South Carolina. He struggled to break into the...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Expanding horizons: Leslie Banta's mental landscapes Published on Jan 31st, 2008 0 comments Ever since Leslie Banta caught my attention with her art boxes at Kronos Gallery's inaugural show in Staunton last May, I've been looking forward to her solo exhibition. So, upon learning that "...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Down to earth: Kars-Marshall's organic ceramics Published on Jan 24th, 2008 0 comments When I traveled in India, I was struck by the potters sitting on street corners, crouched all day at their wheels creating beautiful water jug after beautiful water jug designed purely for function...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Buzz-worthy: Lasko's at home in the hive Published on Jan 17th, 2008 0 comments When musician Jay Pun alerted me his sister-in-law, Britta-Lena Lasko, would be exhibiting beekeeping photographs and handmade brooms at the C&O Gallery, I admit I was initially...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Suburban blur: Patrick's ho-hum house work Published on Jan 10th, 2008 0 comments Several years ago, my dad decided to opt out of having Christmas at our house in Lexington. Instead, we visited my cousin Ginger and her husband, Bob, in their home-on-a-golf-course located in a...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Historical re-vision: Colonial iconoclasm at SSG Published on Jan 3rd, 2008 0 comments Little Bird by Mark Wagner I confess when I first learned Second Street Gallery's new exhibition was called "The Colonial Show," I felt knee-jerk resistance. Growing up in Virginia, I'd been force-...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Cause and effect: Brown makes her marks Published on Dec 13th, 2007 0 comments Sara Brown handed me her business card during the opening of her current exhibition at the Mudhouse, and I promptly tucked it in my wallet without really looking at it. When I took it out later, I...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- </span>Strata-sphere: Layered probings in Staunton Published on Dec 6th, 2007 0 comments "Is that a real bone?" a young boy asked, staring wide-eyed at Jamey Grimes' wall sculpture "Convergence" at Staunton's Kronos gallery. He could hardly be blamed for thinking the tactile curves...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Southern obsessions: A day at the museum (part 2) Published on Nov 29th, 2007 0 comments At the close of last week's column, I had finally entered William Christenberry's exhibit, "Site/Possession," at the University of Virginia Art Museum, after being interrogated and eyed with...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Art thwarting: A day at the museum (Part 1) Published on Nov 22nd, 2007 0 comments If you want to know what it feels like to be a terrorism suspect, you don't have to wait for a trip to the airport: you can experience the joys of over-zealous policing right here at the...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Legends of the fall: Schoultz's fleeting epic outlook Published on Nov 15th, 2007 0 comments It was November's First Friday at Second Street Gallery, and Andrew Schoultz was looking a little worse for wear. Having spent the past 72 hours painting "Horses Bound to Nature in Chaos," a floor...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Seeing green: Art does its part Published on Nov 8th, 2007 1 comments Publicity Photo Is art selfish? That's the loaded question scheduled for discussion at a November 16 McGuffey Art Center brown bag lunch (mark your calendar and make an aesthetically pleasing...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- It's all relative: With families like these, who needs... Published on Nov 1st, 2007 0 comments Publicity photo In the Talking Heads' "Sax and Violins," David Byrne sings, "Mom & Pop, They will f*ck you up. For sure." This weekend's "Kin Flicks"-themed Virginia Film Festival will, no...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Family matters: Alan Berliner's father figuring Published on Oct 25th, 2007 0 comments In filmmaker Alan Berliner's 2001 eulogy for his father, Oscar, the subject of Berliner's Emmy award-winning 1996 documentary, Nobody's Business, he remarked, "Observing my father over the years...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Magic moments: McDonald elevates the ordinary Published on Oct 11th, 2007 0 comments Years ago, when I spent a Chicago summer cataloguing the Harris Bank archives, my boss would occasionally ask me to help his secretary stuff envelopes. The secretary and I, both in our mid-20s,...