Art Features


Culture- ART FEATURE- Map quest: Howe-Stevens' watery directions Published on Jul 6th, 2006 0 comments Looking at Suzanne Howe-Stevens' oil paintings on display as part of Migration's summer exhibition, "Elemental Harmonies," I started thinking about strippers. Yes, strippers– specifically the...
Culture- ART FEATURE- <b>The write stuff: SSG spreads the love</b> Published on Jun 29th, 2006 0 comments First, a disclaimer: Although I don't discuss it below, I, your humble art scribe, collaborated with artist Jen Van Winkle on a piece included in "Love Letter Invitational," Second Street Gallery's...
Culture- ART FEATURE- Jar flies: Italiano's bugged pots Published on Jun 22nd, 2006 0 comments Down came a morning of rain, up shot the mercury, and out came the bane of my summer existence— mosquitoes. Although my pheromones don't always attract the human company I desire, I am an...
Culture- ART FEATURE- Cultural claims: Does a rite make it right? Published on Jun 15th, 2006 0 comments In last Sunday's New York Times, Tom Bissell opened a book review of Rory Stewart's The Places in Between by describing the plight of the modern-day travel writer. "Specialists pounce on the tiniest...
Culture- ART FEATURE- What a crock! Potters wheel into Staunton Published on Jun 1st, 2006 0 comments When Nan Rothwell left college to study theater in England in 1970, she soon came down to earth. Literally. Rothwell began dabbling in a pottery studio in the town where she was staying and found...
Culture- ART FEATURE- Sugar water: Regan's languorous landscapes Published on Jun 1st, 2006 0 comments It's time I confess: watercolor is not my favorite artistic medium. More often than not, watercolor paintings strike me as too weepy, too seep-y, too tooth-achingly sweet and easy. Which is why when...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Water works: McGuffey floats a group show Published on May 25th, 2006 0 comments After viewing the group exhibition H2O, featuring work by Robin Braun, Rob Browning, and Nini Baekstrom, at the McGuffey Art Center, I came to this conclusion: more shows should include ambient sound...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Artist interrupted: Will May goes to pieces Published on May 18th, 2006 0 comments What a relief when Will May told a Second Street Gallery crowd that artistically he likes suggesting a narrative structure without a finished story. I had been mulling over the disparate pieces in...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Personal views: Photographers' choices telling Published on May 11th, 2006 0 comments The past few days I've been trying to think objectively about my subjectivity when viewing friends art. The bottom line is– believe it or not– I tend to remain aggravatingly detached,...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Martial art? Freedom small fries Published on May 4th, 2006 0 comments This week I open a can of worms by raising the question most art writers would rather avoid: the dreaded "But is it art?" When it comes to what I consider visual art, I'm pretty broadminded (some...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Dances with forks: Sharrer's fabulous conflations Published on Apr 27th, 2006 0 comments A couple stops at a shack on a beach while a cross-eyed, horned figure wearing one shoe wanders by leading a goat on a tether. A barefoot woman pours tea for an older gentleman as a crow clinging to...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Pop-op: Robin Campo jokes around Published on Apr 20th, 2006 0 comments I have a party trick: I can write anyone's name in the script used for Sanskrit and Hindi. Of course, the collection of characters won't mean anything in those languages, but it gives people a laugh...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Re-collection: Slaughter's sedimental nature Published on Apr 13th, 2006 0 comments One thing leads to another. Nowhere is this more evident than in an artistic retrospective, where viewers have the chance to see how a snippet of an idea emerging in one image becomes more prominent...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Twisted features: Taking portraits to the extreme Published on Apr 6th, 2006 0 comments When Stephen Margulies mentioned he was curating an exhibition called "The Mutant Image" at the UVA Art Museum, my adolescent heart leapt. I envisioned a gallery filled with strangely...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Look books:<B> </B>Skimming the pages at PVCC Published on Mar 30th, 2006 0 comments When artist Terri Long heard, "Don't judge a book by its cover," she apparently missed the "don't" and took the rest literally. In fact, she often discards everything inside the...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Dreaming mimis: Spirited Aboriginal art Published on Mar 23rd, 2006 0 comments Do you know what a mimi is? For Australian Aborigines, a mimi is a shy yet benevolent ancestral spirit, so tall and spindly that a strong wind could easily snap its neck. For this reason, mimis hunt...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Conglomerations: Eichorst's excessive visions Published on Mar 16th, 2006 0 comments Did you happen to catch any of this season's Project Runway on the Bravo channel? If so, you witnessed fashion designer Santino Rice week after week go from promising beginnings to garments glommed...
Conglomerations: Eichorst's excessive visions Published on Mar 16th, 2006 0 comments Did you happen to catch any of this season's Project Runway on the Bravo channel? If so, you witnessed fashion designer Santino Rice week after week go from promising beginnings to garments...
CULTURE- ART FEATURE- Local Looks: C2D is flat-out fun Published on Mar 9th, 2006 0 comments Regular readers of this column know a sure-fire way to make me roll my eyes is to mention a "group show." But there is one collective endeavor I always look forward to: ArtinPlace.org's...
Local Looks: C2D is flat-out fun Published on Mar 9th, 2006 0 comments Regular readers of this column know a sure-fire way to make me roll my eyes is to mention a "group show." But there is one collective endeavor I always look forward to: ArtinPlace.org's annual...
CULTURE ART FEATURE- Multiplier effect: Meditations on the Buddha Published on Mar 2nd, 2006 0 comments Before we dive into the art, a quick linguistics lesson (come on, you know you want one): Languages tend to simplify over time. According to Guy Deutscher, author of The Unfolding of Language, plain...
Multiplier effect: Meditations on the Buddha Published on Mar 2nd, 2006 0 comments Before we dive into the art, a quick linguistics lesson (come on, you know you want one): Languages tend to simplify over time. According to Guy Deutscher, author of The Unfolding of Language...
Culture- ART FEATURE- Industrious evolution- Sterne's continuous flux Published on Jan 18th, 2006 0 comments In 1950, when 28 rabblerousing artists co-signed a letter to the Metropolitan Museum of Art criticizing its namby-pamby approach to modern art, photographer Nina Leen posed 14 of them for a Time...