The Foster Gallery features work by student artist Lily Ebrahimi, the winner of the Piedmont Arts Guild Special Student Award in “Expressions 2025.”
Ebrahimi is a versatile artist with a diverse background in dance and visual arts. As a senior at Community High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and a former dancer from both the SVB and Star City School of Dance, the arts are a part of her life. Her artistic training also includes time as an alumnus of the prestigious Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan.
Lily has had her works exhibited throughout Virginia, locally at Left of the Center, Piedmont Arts, Pulaski Center for the Arts, Bath County Arts Association Exhibit, and the Clifton Forge Masonic Theater, and nationally has been recognized and showcased by Scholastic for her abilities, winning at the state and national level Gold and Silver medals.
Raised in a family of prolific artists, Ebrahimi has developed a keen eye for color, texture, form, and design. She is eager to build upon her existing skills and expand her knowledge, looking forward to what the future holds for her as a developing artist in the years ahead.
Admission Free
Sponsored by VisitMartinsville, Brightspeed, Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Lynwood Artists, and What's Your Sign.
"Expressions" is an open-entry exhibition presented annually by Piedmont Arts and Lynwood Artists. In honor of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, artists were asked to submit work focusing on the theme “America 250.”
The exhibition offers an innovative and meaningful artistic experience for both artists and the community by transforming the milestone of America’s 250th anniversary into a platform for contemporary creative expression. The exhibition invites artists to explore the concept of revolution in both historical and modern contexts, encouraging new interpretations of freedom, identity, progress, and the evolving American experience.
Guests will encounter a wide range of perspectives and artistic voices, revealing how revolutionary ideals continue to inspire creativity and conversation today. By bringing people together through art, the exhibition underscores the ongoing revolution of thought that defines the American spirit.
Admission Free
Twelve artists explore collage and assemblage as a coping mechanism, a siren call, or a cautionary warning about collective concerns that impact our culture. The collections focus on environmental, emotional, and societal stressors, addressing climate change, COVID-19, grief, identity, and politics.
Whimsical to macabre, refined to raw, poetic to strident, these intimate works pack a hefty punch that belies their small scale. The exhibit includes 92 small wall-mounted works and 45 small 3D works.
Including work by Judy Bowman, Elaine Crivelli, Len Davis, Kristy Deetz, Virginia Derryberry, Reni Gower, Craig Hill, Errin Ironside, Sue Johnson, Axelle Kieffer, Edwin Shelton, and Michele Stutts.
Admission Free
Chris Gregson is an abstract painter who intuitively completes each work, painting without a map and guided by sensation. His imagery is born in this uncharted space, where perception and reflection drift. While journeying down these paths, he makes work that is indebted to its location: a familiar studio in Virginia, a garden-facing studio in Paris, and a small apartment in Brooklyn. Nature is another constant influence, one he describes as "my first and last companion."
To create each painting, he employs layers of marks-influenced by the elegant cursive letters featured on Parisian shop signs-and gestures that build to form aesthetic fields of color. He writes: "In these gestures, I found freedom from the strict geometries that once held my hand, stepping instead into a process of gestural movement from which the images emerge."
The title, which translates to "A New Order of the Ages," pays homage to his high school Latin studies and is a reference to our current moment and the influences in his latest work, namely the "blood red, sky blue, rapeseed fields of spring, the rainbow carnival of clown parades, and the silencing of prairie breezes."
Gregson studied at the former New York Studio and Forum of Stage Design. He began exhibiting his abstract paintings in the 1990s. His art can be found in private, corporate, and public collections, including Markel Corporation and the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia. Since 2022, he has made work about his life in Paris, made possible by residencies at the Cite Internationale des Art that year and in 2023 and 2025. He is based in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Admission Free
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